


season ticket on a one way ride

by Nomette



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Dark Comedy, Dehumanization, Drama, Gen, the X6 and MacCready show, the adventures of bad cop and worst cop, villian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:53:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7352461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomette/pseuds/Nomette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MacCready squinted blearily through his scope and lined up his rifle. A heavy drop of blood slid down his forehead and passed, warm and sticky, through the hollow between his eye and his nose. The man in his sights was some kind of asshole: MacCready had seen him shoot down a passing settler, and that was as good a justification as any to shoot him. MacCready was coming up on twelve hours without any food, and with the Gunners on his tail it was no time to be picky. Asshole was bald, with a nasty scar from his forehead to his chin, and he staggered when MacCready shot him in the head, staggered and brought his hand up to touch the hole in his temple.</p>
<p>“What the fuck,” said MacCready, and shot him again.<br/>----------<br/>AU where MacCready gets hired by the Institute to replace Kellogg after killing him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. breaking the law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a wise word  
> if evil looks good to you  
> some god is heading you on the high road to ruin  
> -Antigonick, Anne Carson

MacCready squinted blearily through his scope and lined up his rifle. A heavy drop of blood slid down his forehead and passed, warm and sticky, through the hollow between his eye and his nose. The man in his sights was some kind of asshole: MacCready had seen him shoot down a passing settler, and that was as good a justification as any to shoot him. He was coming up on twelve hours without any food, and with the Gunners on his tail it was no time to be picky.

Asshole was bald, with a nasty scar from his forehead to his chin, and he staggered when MacCready shot him in the head, staggered and brought his hand up to touch the hole in his temple.

“What the fuck,” said MacCready, and shot him again. The second shot blew the back of asshole's head out, and this time he crumpled like a body should when shot through the head.

That was when MacCready saw the courser. He froze. The courser was looking right in his direction, and for a moment it felt, impossibly, like the courser was looking right at him. A slight incline of the head in his direction, and then the courser took a step forward. MacCready ran for his life.

People always ran straight back, trying to get the maximum distance between them and the pursuer. MacCready, who had been about 350 hundred feet back when he made the shot, had a tiny window of space and so he ran at a 100 degree angle. With any luck the courser would follow the obvious path of retreat, then lose track of him and lose interest. Fat chance. MacCready had seen a courser tear through an entire camp, raiders and all, in search of a single synth. The thing MacCready had shot hadn't been human: he should have realized that after the first hit, when it didn't die.

You shouldn't have shot it, he thought, cursing inwardly as a piece of foliage slapped him in the face. But he hadn't known, and it was better to be chased by one courser than by two. He was starting to pant, his chest constricted by panic and exertion. The fucking cigarettes were going to kill him, just like Lucy had always said they would. He laughed to himself on his way down the hill, his feet leaving huge, obvious skid marks as he went down. No matter. The thing now was to get distance. He could hide later, when he'd gotten some space on the thing. He arrived at the bottom of the hill panting, his side in a stitch, and chugged down some water, gasping for breath.

His binoculars were still in his hand from earlier; he lifted them and scanned the hills for movement. Some bloatflies a way off, a wandering mole rat. A black figure on the other side of the lake, about 400 feet away. MacCready's blood ran cold. All that running, and he'd barely put any distance between him and the thing. He slapped the top on his water and jogged off, his side aching with pain.

“You're not dead yet,” MacCready muttered to himself, and ran deeper into the woods. Above him, a radiation storm was blowing in, making MacCready's skin tight and his teeth ache. It was good weather to run in, a slight breeze coming from the west, cooling his skin. He jogged into the woods, a single figure in a tattered coat, and the darkness closed over his head.

The courser followed him across the ravine, and along the train tracks, around the old diner and through the wrecked remains of the old city, and past the ghoul infested tunnels. Ghouls didn't stop it. Raiders didn't stop it. Mirelurks didn't stop it. MacCready shot it in the forehead on two separate occasions and the bullet just plinked off and landed smoking on the ground. The only effect was to give away his position.

After the second time, MacCready gave up on trying to shoot it and just ran.

It followed him under the bridge and across the river, MacCready taking rads as he tried to throw the thing off, and it followed him past a settlement, MacCready desperate enough at that point to try anything to throw the thing off. It didn't work. He climbed to a sniper's perch, shooting pains going through his side with each step, and waited for the thing to walk past a mirelurk nest he'd spotted a while back. His heart was pounding, his breath coming in little stuttered gasps. He'd been running for hours.

Not daring to look away from the scope, he drank the last of his water and stuffed a fancy lads snack cake into his mouth. The courser came out of the fog and MacCready paused mid-chew to shoot one of the mirelurk eggs. The courser's head snapped to one side, staring at him, and then the mirelurks were on him, waving their claws. MacCready left a mine on the stairs and hurried away.

He was a few blocks away when he heard the boom: he smiled grimly to himself, the movement more of a twitch, and kept moving. The courser tracked him through the streets, over the rooftops, around the super mutant camp, through the rain, through the radiation storm. It hadn't taken a shot, not yet. Various fluids were splashed across its front, and the edge of the coat was looking slightly ratty, but the thing kept coming. MacCready was running on empty. He'd planned to run east, to double back and try and make one of the bridges, but he'd never make it at this rate. The thing was getting closer and closer, and the mirelurks wouldn't slow it for long.

MacCready made his final stand in a shitty old tower filled with super mutants. The things were stupid as fuck; they'd left the outside elevator on. MacCready took the thing up, then killed the two on the top floor and smashed the winch, stranding himself at the top. The courser could fight his way though the mutants to get to him.

The gunfire started soon after MacCready had cleared the floor. He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers and breathed in hard. Duncan would- no. Now wasn't the time to think of Duncan. There was on an old cooler, the top splashed with blood. Someone had been up here before the super mutants, someone human. That was the commonwealth for you, death around every corner. MacCready popped the top off the beer and drank it down. When was the last beer he'd had? Before he'd run from the gunners, a few nights ago around the campfire, listening to them brag about all the loot they'd grabbed in Quincy, the girls they'd had and the caps they'd spent.

A bad last beer. This one was hardly better, but MacCready chugged it down, then went to fortify the perimeter. Mines, shotgun traps, the works. Every thing he had, and then he went and sat in a corner. The explosions were getting closer, the super mutants cursing, yelling out empty threats, the ground shaking as they trooped down the stairs.

One by one, the voices went silent.

MacCready fixed his collar. He couldn't stop thinking of Duncan, now. He'd tried, for what that was worth. Slightly less than a bullet, more than a word. The first line of mines went off: the courser had avoided the shotgun trap, as MacCready had known he would, and hit the mines instead. Not long now.

MacCready held his breath. A shadow, or an unnatural moment of stillness. MacCready fired and hit the thing with a shotgun blast. They'd fired at the same time: the scorching heat of a laser blast paralyzed MacCready's shoulder. He squeezed off another shot and then the courser was on him, throwing the shotgun to the floor.

The courser jammed its pistol against MacCready's forehead and he squeezed his eyes shut. There was a loud crack, and then MacCready landed on the ground, his face stinging with pain. The thing had hit him. MacCready stared blankly up from the floor, numb with pain.  Did coursers like to play with people before killing them? 

The thing tapped the side of its head and listened to some kind of tinny directions through a headset. MacCready couldn't make out the words through the ringing in his ears. The thing turned its head and looked down at him, then lifted its pistol. 

“The Institute invites you to come and work for us,” it said, and MacCready’s heart skipped. Silence in the old tower, the wind howling through the blasted windows. MacCready’s mouth tasted of blood. The thing was waiting for him with eyes like closed windows. 

“Yes,” said MacCready. “That sounds like an offer I can’t refuse.”

 

The Institute lights stabbed into MacCready’s head, worsening the ache of his bruised head. The thing was called X6, and it marched him in like a captive, its grip just short of painful. MacCready had long ago passed from exhaustion into resignation, and was so surprised to be alive that nothing could have phased him. He listened with half an ear as the woman from the Institute laid out the terms of his contract.

“Sign here,” she said, at last, and pushed a piece of paper towards him.

“I'd like to sign once I've had some sleep.” The woman went stiff at this, like he'd slapped her.

“I can explain again,” she began.

“I haven’t slept more than four hours in three days,” MacCready interrupted. “I've been chased halfway across hell by your courser, and I'm starved, thirsty, and oh yeah, I've been shot. Will you let me sleep or not?”

“I can't let you go anywhere unless you sign,” the woman repeated.

“Alright, but just so we're clear, I'm signing this so I can sleep. Don't fool yourself that it's an agreement.” He wrote the name of an old friend on the line, and the woman nodded to the courser. The thing marched him to a small room, barely bigger than a cupboard, and locked him in. There was a small bottle of water and stimpack on his mattress: MacCready chugged the water, jammed the needle into the burned flesh of his shoulder, and plummeted into a dark, feverish sleep.

 

Waking was worse than being asleep had been; all the adrenaline which had been keeping him afloat was gone. His mouth tasted dry and leathery, his stomach was growling with hunger, and his forehead was tight and achey. Water, MacCready thought, and forced himself with agonizing effort to his feet, then knocked on the door. Nothing. MacCready stared blankly at the door, his mind in the early stages of shock, and then sank down onto the mattress. A puff of air, and the door opened. It was the courser from the day before.

“Medical wants to see you,” he said. MacCready scrambled to his feet and went. Medical turned out to be a small, airless white room crewed by a pair of eggheads in white coats. 

“We’ve been given orders to get you in order before the director talks to you,” one of them said, and reached for MacCready’s shoulder. MacCready took a step backwards and parried the probing hand. The courser didn’t like that: it went very still. 

“Hey, hey. Hands off the merchandise. The shoulder’s the only thing that really needs seeing to, and I can do it myself. Just give me, hmm, a stimpack, some med-x, about a gallon of water, and some vodka.”

“Vodka?”

“It’s disinfectant,” MacCready said, pronouncing the unfamiliar word carefully. Lucy had always been on him to learn about medicine; he missed the days when he’d been able to come home with a scratch and have her boss him into bed and touch his forehead with her hand and fuss. No one had fussed over MacCready in a damn long time. 

“You know what that is?” one of the eggheads asked. MacCready didn’t dignify that with an answer, only sneered, grabbed a stimpack from a nearby table and started to see to his shoulder. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but what didn’t? You learned to survive a certain amount of pain in the Commonwealth, or you died. The courser and the lab coats watched as MacCready popped the heat blisters with the stimpack needle and pried burned pieces of cloth from his skin. 

When he pushed the needle into his skin, there was an audible intake of breath from one of the scientists. 

“Are you going to gawp, or are you going to get me my medicine?” MacCready demanded. The coats scattered, their coats flapping as they moved, dodging around the impassive courser. Soon, MacCready had his water and his pills. He chugged down a cup to start with, continued with the pills, then went back with his shoulder. It took him about fifteen minutes to finish, all told, and by the end his headache had even started to fade. In the end he poured the vodka on his shoulder, splashing the table with a mix of blood and liquor, smirked at the scientists, and followed the courser. 

“Why’d you kill Kellogg?” the courser asked, guiding him through the hall. It wasn’t touching his wrist, but MacCready could tell that he was being guided in the same way a sheepdog herds a sheep. There was something disturbing about the flatness of the courser’s voice. It gave the impression that it wasn’t a human being at all, but only a drawing of one, as though MacCready might be able to look it from the right angle and see the back of the paper. 

“I was thirsty and he had gear. I didn’t see you, or I would have looked for someone else to shoot.”  

“Damn straight,” said the courser. “Do you often shoot random people?”

“No, not really. I saw him gun down a settler,” MacCready said.  He tried to shrug, and his shoulder ached with the motion. Those laser pistols were really something. 

They reached an office and MacCready stepped inside. X6 shut the door behind him, leaving MacCready alone in the small, white space. There was a screen in front of him. It flickered, revealing a man’s face. 

“Robert Joseph MacCready,” the voice said. “Former Gunner Sergeant. Noted sniper and mercenary. You gave X6 quite the chase. Ten hours, and with no head start. Why did you leave your current employers?”

“I didn’t like my officers,” MacCready said, scowling at the screen. Really, it was Quincy that had turned his stomach, but he wasn’t about to tell the voice that. With fuckers like this, you couldn’t show an inch of weakness or they’d be on you like flies on carrion. 

“Winlock and Barnes,” the man said, glancing through a file. “X6 says that you agreed to work for us fairly promptly. I imagine it seemed like the best option at the time. You should know that wherever you go, we can find you. Wherever you hide, we can go there. On the other side, there are advantages to working with us. Better armor. Better weapons. A place to sleep.”

“Well, buddy, when you put it like that, it sounds so easy.”

“I was the one who suggested that we hire you in Kellogg’s place,” the man said coldly. “I can put the hit order back on you whenever I need to. My name is Director Ayo and you will address me as such.”

“Got it, Director,” MacCready said. Another pansy little man who thought he was hardass because much more dangerous people took it on themselves to do his work. 

“Good. X6 will brief you. After the trial period is over, we can discuss benefits.” MacCready waited until the screen had turned off to roll his eyes. A moment of silence, and then the door opened with a little puff of air. 

I’m still alive, MacCready thought. Everything else is survivable. He smiled, set his shoulders, then twirled in the chair. 

“What took you so long, buddy? You ready to get this show on the road?”

 

The courser walked him through the halls of the Institute, then paused in front of a door. 

“You’re running a fever,” it said, and MacCready thought it might be pleased. “It’s surprising that you were able to evade me for so long.”

“Next time try me when I’m not 12 hours out from deserting and starving,” MacCready retorted. “Or even better, next time you can run, and I can chase you down in an unbreakable suit of power armor.”

“I wasn’t wearing armor,” X6 said, and there was a high, cold pride in it. MacCready glanced sideways at him, disgruntled by the first hint of feeling he’d seen in the courser. 

“I shot you in the head  _ twice _ . Just because it’s not on the outside doesn’t mean it’s not armor.”

“Jealous?” X6 said, and yes, the courser was definitely poking fun at him. MacCready scowled. “Where were we going, anyway?”

“You’re going to sleep,” X6 said. MacCready folded his arms and glared. He was tired enough not to care about the implied threat; being shot was beginning to sound like a better alternative than staying alive. A pause, and then X6 tapped a code into the keypad on the wall and the door slid open. 

“Thanks for walking me back home,” MacCready said, and walked in. “You really make a guy feel special.” The courser stared blankly at him through the doorway, and then the door slid shut. MacCready’s new digs were huge compared to the single bedroll and foot locker he’d had with the Gunners, and they were clean. No alcohol, and the lights were too bright, but the water worked. MacCready stared at the clear, precious fluid running out of the tap, then stuck his head under the faucet and drank ravenously. When he was done, he flopped into the bed, pulled the covers over his head to block out the painful lights, and was asleep instantly. 

The fever lasted two days. MacCready slept on the Institute bed, which was weirdly soft, and then on the floor with blankets and a pillow. Water came from the taps, and twice a day a synth came by with some kind of nutrition paste on a tray. On the third day, MacCready’s fever broke, and he was able to get out of bed and look around. 

A thin metal wall curtained off a small area, behind which was some kind of glass booth. MacCready tested the knobs cautiously and yelped when water began to sputter from a knob above. 

“What the fuck,” he said, and then started to laugh. It was a shower! He’d read about them in books, but he’d never actually seen one that worked before. “No thanks,” he said to to the empty room, still laughing, and checked the other cabinets. It was mostly ammo and books, a few things MacCready hadn’t seen before  and a lot of things that he had. Plasma grenades, fusion cores, even a small mini-nuke. Whoever had lived in this room before MacCready had been incredibly rich and very boring. All this ammo, and nothing to entertain themselves with. 

A knock on the door, and then the courser from earlier came striding in. He looked at MacCready, then wrinkled his nose slightly. 

“We’ll be going on a test-run today. I highly suggest you shower, so as not to contaminate any of the scientists with your illness.”

“You scared of getting sick?”

“I don’t get scared,” X6 said, voice totally flat. MacCready thought he might be annoyed. He clutched the thought to himself as he suffered through the stinging cold of the shower and the ache of the pressure on his still-tender skin. From the taste of the water, it wasn’t radiated, which was an insane waste of clean water. MacCready regretfully watched it swirl down the drain, the dried blood from his shoulder giving it a faint reddish tinge, then hurried out of the shower and dressed back up. 

X6 met him outside the door. 

“Ready?”

“I could use some ammo, since I spent most of it on your thick forehead,” MacCready said, annoyed. “But yeah, I’m ready.”

The teleporter set the two of them down in a small alley in a flash of white light. MacCready scrambled for cover, his eyes still aching from the flash, and hoped to god no one had seen them come in. He couldn’t see shit.  

“Oh d--- does it do that every time? It seems like a bit of a  _ fucking liability _ to come in literally blind.”

“The Institute has made sure the area is clear,” X6 replied. He was standing in the middle of the road, seemingly unphased by the transport. MacCready sneered at him. 

“With what, their dicks? Do you have cameras around here?”

“We do,” X6 said. He walked off, and okay, that was definitely a smirk at the corner of his mouth. Fucking coursers. MacCready scrambled after him, still scanning the rooftops. Cameras were great, but eyesight was better. 

“Where are we going? Goodneighbor, Diamond City?” From the smell of the river and the look of the buildings, they were a few blocks from the river and a bit east of Goodneighbor. A glance at one of the street signs confirmed it. 

“We’re going to a clothing store,” X6 said, glancing sideways at him. 

“I thought I didn’t get new duds until later? Or did you just want to go shopping?”

“If you’ll be quiet, I’ll tell you.” MacCready scowled at X6’s retreating back. “There’s a railroad agent ensconced at this location. We believe they’ve camouflaged themselves as a raider. Our orders are to clear the location.”

MacCready hadn’t known that the railroad was real, but hell, after the week he’d had he’d believe anything. He nodded. X6 stopped at the corner and crouched against the wall, his gun out. 

“I’m the sniper,” MacCready said quietly. “Allow me.” He squeezed next to X6 on the wall, inhaled, and then peered around the corner. A raider was sitting in front of the door, smoking a cigarette. MacCready inhaled blew his head out in the perfect moment of stillness between breaths. 

The man hit the floor, unnoticed. There was no sound of alarm, but MacCready ducked around the corner anyway and counted to ten. A raider’s voice rang out, and then the sound of footsteps. MacCready stepped quietly back and shot the second raider as he came charging around the corner. 

“Dumbass,” he muttered. 

“Indeed,” said X6. They waited a few seconds more. No other raiders charged around the corner. Quick as a cat, X6 slid from his position against the wall and went around the corner. 

“All clear,” he confirmed.

“Sweet,” said MacCready, and started checking the dead man for scraps, his scarf pulled high over his nose to block out the stench of ground meat and piss. There was a stimpack in the man’s jacket, and ammo in his pouch; MacCready pocketed them triumphantly. 

“Good. Better we take it than leave it for more wasteland scum to pick up.”

“Not too big on raiders, are you, buddy? It’s okay, neither am I.” X6 didn’t dignify that with a response. They finished up the second corpse, then entered the actual shop. MacCready had been expecting something something more ominous, but it was just an old shop, the faded remains of clothes still sitting on some of the shelves. Dust particles filtered slowly through the air, and there was the lingering trace of cigarette smoke. MacCready slid his bandana up before his allergies could get the best of him. 

X6 signaled for silence, and MacCready tried to convey with his facial expression that X6 was an idiot and MacCready was already sneaking as best he could. They walked quietly between the rows. 

MacCready and X6 saw the raider just as the raider saw them. The raider was fast with his gun. X6 was faster. He sprang forward, ripped the man’s gun from his hand, then snapped his neck with a single brutal twist. 

MacCready lifted his gun. X6 glanced over; he thought MacCready was going to shoot him. People stood a certain way when he was braced for a bullet, even a person like X6, who barely qualified for the word. MacCready fired. MacCready skimmed the raider behind X6, swore, reloaded, and fired again, and then more raiders were pouring down the steps. 

“Back me up,” X6 said, and then the world narrowed to nothing but MacCready’s scope and his trigger finger. X6 was a blur of motion, a black shadow that flickered with the light, impossible to hit or predict. MacCready aimed away from him, towards the raiders who had stupidly bottle necked themselves at the top of the stairs. From their vantage point, the bodies of their fellows made a human barricade between them and their attackers. 

A bullet whistled past MacCready: he held position and fired while the enemy was reloading, then ducked. His palms were sweaty, his hands steady. The pain from his burned shoulder had faded, replaced by the rush of adrenaline. He lined up one last shot and watched through his scope as X6 picked up the final raider and tossed him over the balcony like a toy. 

After that, the rest was easy. The target was hiding in a booby-trapped room; MacCready picked the lock on a grenade box and threw a few grenades in, as well as a mine at the entrance for luck. The target blew themselves to pieces. 

“I wanted to verify that person’s identity,” X6 said, looking at the pieces on the ground. 

“Hey, the head’s still in one piece,” said MacCready, trying not to smirk, and lit up a cigarette while X6 gingerly wiped the blood from the corpse. There were some crates in the room; MacCready peered in and found a huge stash of drugs. 

“Hey,” he said, and let out a low whistle. “This is some stash.”

“This is no time to get high,” X6 said. MacCready had never heard anyone sound so scornful and so even at the same time. 

“I don’t want to use ’em, I wanna sell ‘em. This is 200, 300 caps, easy.” X6 didn’t say anything, so MacCready started scooping the drugs into his knapsack. There was an issue of Grognak on a back shelf; MacCready snatched it eagerly up and started to read. 

“What is that?”

“It’s Grognak! Of course, you wouldn’t appreciated good reading.” X6 didn’t seem convinced. He shook his head and started to head for the exit; MacCready tucked the magazine tenderly away and followed him. They ducked outside and headed to a small alley. X6 was about to start radioing for a pick-up when they heard the sound of a vertibird. 

“The Brotherhood never patrols out here,” MacCready said, disbelieving, but the vertibird was there. It passed overhead, and for a second MacCready thought that they hadn’t been seen, and then the miniguns started. 

“Fuck!” he said, and took off around a corner, then ran back, forcing the vertibird to circle. 

“I can take them from here with enough time.”

“I can’t! I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any fucking armor! Follow me.” He took off down the alley, hoping to hell that he’d remembered the layout of the city correctly. The patrol was chasing the two of them, firing shots over the top of the building. X6 took a spray of shots, grunted, and kept running. He didn’t seem winded at all, even though MacCready’s heart felt like it was about to burst. 

Finally, they reached the square. MacCready yanked out his rifle, lined up the shot and fired into the pond right under the little swan. 

“What are you doing?”

“You’ll see,” said MacCready, gasping for breath. The vertibird was circling around. MacCready ducked behind a large trashcan and peered out. 

Swan was lumbering from his pond. MacCready sucked a huge breath greedily into his lungs, fired a trio of shots into Swan’s chest, and then started climbing the fire escape. 

“Go ahead of me. There will be raiders.” X6 bounded eagerly up the fire escape and the whole building shook as Swan launched a boulder and missed. MacCready went slowly up the stairs, keeping an eye on Swan so he could duck appropriately. Raider bodies were falling from the sky on either side of him; he could hear screams up ahead. 

The helicopter had backed off slightly and was turning around. MacCready waited for Swan to throw his boulder, then fired at the helicopter pilot. The shot went wide.

“Fuck,” MacCready said, frustrated, and kept climbing. Swan’s rocks were getting more accurate. A buzz overhead, and then the mini-gun opened fire on Swan. Thank god. Someone up there was an idiot. MacCready hurried to the set of stairs second from the top, where the roof would still protect him, and lined up another shot. The Brotherhood wasn’t paying attention. MacCready squeezed off a burst of shots into one of the men and laughed triumphantly when a corpse fell from the plane. There was a shout. MacCready ducked, knowing full well that they wouldn’t see him from his crouch, and there was a crunch as one of Swan’s rocks hit the side of the plane. 

MacCready hurried up to the roof. X6 was taking potshots at the pilots with his little laser pistol. The gun had been enough to wreck MacCready, but it was pretty useless against a helicopter; the only thing it was doing was giving their position away. 

“Cut it out!” MacCready yelled, but X6 ignored him. The helicopter, which had been  circling Swan, trembled in the air and turned clumsily to face them. MacCready tensed, ready to dive back onto the fire escape. There was a boom as one of Swan’s rocks struck the tail end of the helicopter, creating a wide crack that leaked flaming gasoline. The helicopter wobbled wildly.

MacCready’s hands were still, but his heart was thundering, his palms slick with sweat. He got down on one knee and waited. The windshield was cracked. Perfect. The helicopter turned so that the pilot was facing their roof. MacCready sprayed a perfect triangle of shots into the pilot’s chest and smiled. 

“Got ’em.” The vertibird spun crazily and crashed into a nearby building with an explosion that shook the floor. 

X6 stalked to the edge of the roof to look down at the wreckage, something like triumph on his face. Lit by the burning flames of the vertibird, he looked like a silhouette, a shadow created by the fires of hell. MacCready moved to stand beside him. 

“Your knowledge of the commonwealth is impressive,” X6 said, at last. His voice was soft with something like menace and like delight. “You will be a good replacement for Kellogg.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Welcome to the X6 and MacCready show! All murder, all the time.  
> -Shout-out to Seasaltpepper, 005, and sister-dear, I would never have written this if they hadn't been so enthusiastic!  
> \- Gonna do regular mini-updates on my [tumblr](http://nomette.tumblr.com/), in case you wanna see this as it's made.  
> \- Someone please explain to me why X6 has a tiny-ass laser pistol instead of a plasma pistol. Come on.


	2. mother (tell your children not to walk my way)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Therefore bihoveth hire a ful long spoon  
> That shal ete with a feend.  
> -Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Merchant's Tale"

They ran three other missions that week, all of them successful, and on MacCready’s sixth day at the Institute X6 led him to an empty room and handed him a little laser pistol.

“The Director wants to see you shoot.” MacCready took the pistol and gave X6 a confused look, and then little targets appeared at the far end of the room. A firing range! MacCready fought down hysterical laughter. They’d made themselves so safe down here that they didn’t even have real targets. MacCready took his time with his shots, smirking at the way the little paper silhouettes crisped.  

A little bell rang, and a mechanical voice announced that MacCready had hit eighty percent of the targets. MacCready couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing. 

“Again,” said X6. They went until MacCready hit all the targets, then switched to a laser rifle, then to grenades, then to a plasma pistol, then to plasma rifles, then to a shotgun, and last of all, to MacCready’s familiar old rifle. 

He did a perfect sweep on the first try with his rifle and grinned, then ostentatiously blew the smoke from the barrel. He wasn’t sure why it was so much fun to provoke X6, but it was. He felt like a kid again, poking a radroach with a stick to see what it would do. 

“Pretty good, right?” he said, not really expecting an answer. “Me and this rifle, we’re a great team.”

“There is no reason for you to refer to that gun as if it’s a sentient creature,” X6 said, which was downright chatty of him. 

“This gun is my baby,” MacCready said, grinning, and tried not to think of Duncan. The Institute had some pretty high-tech medical stuff, but hell if MacCready trusted them. Maybe he’d be able to borrow X6 later and take him through Med-Tek, or maybe pigs would fly. MacCready shrugged off the misery that came with thinking about Duncan and forced himself to focus on the present. X6 was looking at him. “What do you want?” he demanded, irritated. 

“Your gun is not standard issue,” X6 observed, like that even meant anything.

“Your face isn’t standard issue,” MacCready snapped, not wanting to hear X6 talk shit about his rifle. The Institute could have all the fancy weapons they wanted, but there was nothing like a hunting rifle when you needed to get the job done. X6 looked confused. 

“My face is standard issue for an 88 model,” he said. 

“Oh, for christ’s sake… never mind.” 

 

Director Ayo called MacCready to the bureau a few hours later.

“I’m prepared to offer you employment with us,” he said, shuffling a stack of papers. MacCready bit down a snarky response; they were about to go into negotiations, and he wanted his days off more than he wanted to make it clear how little he respected Ayo.

“Thank you,” MacCready said. Ayo looked like the kind of asshole that would have liked to be called sir, but MacCready wasn’t ready to kiss quite that much ass.

“X6 will continue to serve as your partner, and I’ll be sending you on your missions. Once we’re satisfied that you’re not going to try to run out on us, you’ll be eligible for cybernetic enhancement and other benefits.” MacCready nodded. 

“Fair enough. I want two days off every ten, and I get to go down to Diamond City every now and then for a beer. You can send someone with me if you’re worried that I’ll snitch.”

“Teleporter access is restricted,” Ayo said, which meant that he didn’t object to the rest. 

“Then don’t send me back after a mission. I can do my report via headset, or send it back with X6.” Ayo looked surprised that MacCready had noticed the headset; he really did think that MacCready was that stupid.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Ayo said, which meant that he was going to drag it out just to remind MacCready that he could. MacCready bravely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 

“Right. Can I have the key to my room?”

He spent the next half hour poking around the Institute, trying to get all the department names in order. X6, who had apparently been assigned to follow MacCready everywhere, was an absolutely unhelpful tour guide. 

“What the hell kind of name is Advanced Systems?” MacCready said, squinting at the paint on the wall. “What does that even mean?”

“Advanced Systems are systems that are advanced,” X6 said. 

“No fucking shit?” They walked around the weird central area with the grass and the water and shit, copping more than a few weird looks from scientists. MacCready couldn’t get any of them to look directly at him, which was weird as hell, but whatever. He lit a cigarette and lounged against the rail while X6 frowned at him disapprovingly. 

“Don’t start on the cigarette,” MacCready warned him. 

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” X6 said. 

“Liar,” said MacCready comfortably, and blew out a long stream of smoke. He’d never been one for the harder chems, but there was nothing wrong with a cigarette now and then. They finished the tour, and then X6 herded MacCready back towards his room. 

“What do you do when you’re not patrolling?” he asked, curious. 

“I’m always patrolling,” X6 replied. MacCready rolled his eyes. 

“How do you train, then? You seem like a training kind of guy.” X6 gave him a blank look. He was clearly waiting for MacCready to go into his room, but MacCready didn’t feel like doing him the favor. 

“I ain’t got nothing to do in that room,” he said, leaning against the wall. “What do you do around here?”

“I patrol,” X6 repeated. “I spar, and I do paperwork at the bureau.” Well, if that wasn’t the most depressing list of hobbies MacCready had ever heard, he didn’t know what was. He decided regretfully he wasn’t bored enough to try sparring with a courser and walked back to the range, where he spent the rest of the afternoon fiddling with his rifle.

 

MacCready ate breakfast with the coursers, who were playing some kind of high stakes game of grab ass under the table. MacCready pretended not to notice. The food reminded him of the Gunners’ mess hall; it seemed like cafeteria food sucked no matter where you were. He smirked, thinking of Gunners eating in their shit-ass cantina where the seats were mostly splinters and the wind rattled through the bullet holes in the wall. Winlock and Barnes were probably still looking for him. Let ‘em keep looking. X6 was staring holes in MacCready’s forehead, so MacCready ate his slop slow, just for him. When they finished, X6 gave him the hand signal that meant ‘follow me’ and got up.

“Where’s the enemy?” MacCready joked, and got a glare for his trouble.

“We’re headed to the armory,” X6 said, and walked away, forcing MacCready to jog after him. The armory? MacCready frowned at X6’s retreating back. MacCready’s jacket was warm and sturdy, and it had kept him alive through more than one winter. Lucy had bought it for him from a passing trader years before. 

“Can I just get some padding added to what I’m wearing?” MacCready asked, jogging up to X6. “What you’re wearing is kind of conspicuous. If I need to go into a town, I don’t need what I’m wearing to have Institute stamped across the front.”

“Take it up with Dr. Hernandez,” X6 replied. 

Dr. Hernandez turned out to be a short, dark skinned man with a permanently dubious expression. When MacCready took off his coat and set it on the table, Hernandez used a pen to open it, squinting at the torn padding on the inside. 

“In my honest opinion, this should be incinerated.”

“Aw, come on,” MacCready said, making an effort not to lose his temper. “Besides, everything up top has already been incinerated, so it’ll blend in better that way.”

“It certainly has a protective layer of grime,” Dr. Hernandez said, but he took the coat. “I’ll do my best. In the meantime, you can wear courser armor.”

“Sure, if I want every person I meet to try and shoot me. I’m not a courser, I can’t take a bullet to the ribs and just walk it off. I need something that’s not conspicuous from a mile off.”

“Well, we don’t have anything, unless you want to wear Kellogg’s old armor.”

“Sure,” said MacCready. 

Kellogg’s armor was locked in a safe in MacCready’s room. They’d literally slotted him into the room of the man he killed, easy as loading a gun. It was a cold place, this. People up top killed because they had to, because they were hungry, because someone else was coming to kill them. People here killed so they could take notes about it on a clipboard. 

Well, fuck it, MacCready had starved enough in his life. He was just about ready to join the ranks of the well-fed and careless, even if it meant putting a cap in a man or two. He adjusted Kellogg's armor to fit him and followed X6. 

“This is the armory,” X6 said. He said something else, too, but MacCready didn’t hear it over his own whoop of delight. The room was stuffed with guns, grenades, mines, bullets, fusion cores- all the toys anyone could ever want. 

“How much of this can we use?” MacCready asked. There was a fat man sitting on the shelf. MacCready had always wanted to nuke something, but nukes more than fifty caps a pop and he’d always needed the money. 

“Take what you want,” X6 said.

“Holy shit,” MacCready said, and picked up a flamethrower. “This is the greatest day of my life.” 

The mission turned out to be a synth hunt, and MacCready enjoyed every minute of it. He’d decided against the nuke in the end; beautiful as it was, the damn thing was heavy. He grabbed some grenades from the grenade box, though, and a nasty combat rifle for close up, and a flamer just for the hell of it. The missions that week had given him a slightly better idea of how X6 attacked: very fast, but in straight lines. Whatever kind of armor they’d stuck in him, it meant that he didn’t care about bullets too much, which suited MacCready just fine. X6 drew the fire, and MacCready pulled the trigger. They caught up the synth near a little settlement, and MacCready remembered with a pang the rumors that the Institute would butcher whole families to get to a synth.

“We still on retrieval?” he asked. 

“We just need to grab the synth,” X6 replied.. There were two ways out of the farm, MacCready eyed them and made a split second decision. 

“Stay here. I’ll flush them out. No need to kill some farmers.”

“Why not?” X6 asked, giving MacCready a dead stare. 

“Why waste the bullets?” MacCready asked, and took off at a jog. He circled around, then sprinted towards the farm, yelling. 

“Courser!” he said, and stumbled up to the farm. “There’s a courser on my tail! You gotta clear out!” The farmer and his daughter didn’t need telling. They took off like there was hell on their tails, which there was, and the synth came charging down the stairs and out the back door. MacCready ambled lazily to the back porch, lined up his shot, and shot them in the thigh. X6 came out and spoke some mumbo jumbo combination of letters and numbers, and the synth went limp, totally still. 

“It would have been better to retrieve them unharmed,” X6 said. 

“Yeah, well, I don’t know any of that mumbo-jumbo,” MacCready said, eyeing the limp body of their target. “Do you have one of those recall codes?”

“I do,” X6 said. Weird. MacCready shrugged and headed back into the house. 

“Where are you going?” X6 called. 

“I want a beer before we go,” MacCready called. In the end, X6 insisted on taking the synth back as soon as possible, but MacCready was able to knick some novels for a light reading and put some beers in his pack. 

“Alcohol is not conductive to good health.”

“Neither is working as a mercenary, but here we are. Besides, alcohol’s better for you than unpurified water. The chemicals in it mean you’re less likely to be sick.” Lucy had told him that once, a long time ago, and MacCready had never forgotten it. X6 looked startled, as though he hadn’t expected MacCready to know the word chemicals, then shook his head slightly. He tapped the side of his glasses and spoke. 

“X6, returning to the Institute with the mercenary. Objective complete.”

Half an hour later, MacCready was sitting on his bed with a beer in hand, his new books piled around him, his belly full of the weird paste they called food in the Institute. On the screen of his TV, a courser was chasing down some miserable synth. Better it than MacCready. It was a bit lonely, but hell, he’d slept in caves and up trees; he’d starved in shitty no-good bars and half died of radiation sickness out on the road. He’d survive. His beer finished, he popped a new one on the bedside table. 

“Here’s to the fucking Institute,” he said, and took a long drink. 

  
Saturday, flamethrower. Sunday, cryo grenades. Monday, fat man. Tuesday, vacation. 

The Institute still didn’t trust MacCready, which meant that he got to see X6 wearing a pair of farmer’s overalls and a disgruntled look. MacCready laughed until his stomach hurt.

“I fail to see the humor,” X6 said. They were in an old railroad safehouse that they’d been ordered to clean out. After the mission was over, X6 had vanished into a side room, emerged looking like the world’s angriest farmer and announced that MacCready’s vacation time had just started and he was coming with. 

“You don’t look like a farmer. You look like a courser wearing farmer overalls,” MacCready said, when he managed to stop laughing. “Come on, at least put on some mercenary clothes. No one’s going to believe you’re not dangerous, but if we stick some armor on it won’t look like a bad disguise.”

X6 grudgingly condescended to wear some gunner armor picked off a corpse, even wasting a whole container of dirty water to scrub the sweat off the inside.

“You missed a spot,” MacCready said, pointing to the dented surface of the armor, and grinned at X6’s answering scowl. 

“Where are we going?” X6 said. Man, MacCready hadn’t thought of that. It was one thing to demand time off, and another to actually get it. 

“Goodneighbor,” he decided, thinking of Duncan. 

It was a cold, foggy day. The Institute had cleaned up and padded MacCready’s coat, but they couldn’t do anything about the way the fog sat on his scope, making everything hazy and indistinct. MacCready’s nerves were crackling with tension when he saw the first super mutant emerge from the fog and die to a superb head kick from X6. After that, he stopped worrying. 

They made it to Goodneighbor a little after five, just when things were starting to get going, people waking up from their hangovers and shuffling into the streets. X6 was glaring at the bums by the door as if he expected them to rush him at any moment; MacCready leaned in, trying not to laugh. 

“Most people here won’t actually attack you in the streets, unless you look like you’re trying to pick a fight, you know, like you’re doing now. Try to look less threatening.” X6’s features did a sort of strange wiggle as he tried to rearrange them into an unthreatening configuration. It looked difficult. MacCready left him to it and headed to the statehouse. 

Hancock was up on the third floor, relaxing with some chems. 

“MacCready! It’s been a while. Heard the Gunners got you, glad to see it’s not the case.” 

“Nah, bunch of amateurs like that ain’t gonna catch me, Hancock.” Hancock grinned and the two of them toasted to that. They sat, trading drinks and old stories, until one of the guards came bursting into the room. 

“MacCready, that guy you brought with you is having a gunfight in the damn courtyard!”

“What the hell,” said MacCready, and hurried down the stairs, Hancock trailing behind him. “Frick,”MacCready said, trying to think of a lie to sell to Hancock. “He’s an ex-raider, but I though he’d be able to keep his shit together.” They burst into the front yard and found X6 standing in a corner, arms folded, glaring and unimpressed by the guards holding shotguns on him. Two corpses were at his feet. 

“They started it,” X6 said. 

The rundown, as gathered by asking a bunch of witnesses, went something like this: X6 had been standing by the door when Winlock and Barnes walked up to him. According to X6, they’d started asking about MacCready- where he was, how X6 knew him. X6 had told them he didn’t have anything to say. They’d threatened him. X6 had threatened them back. Winlock had put his hand on his gun. X6 had proved that he was better at backing up his threats than Winlock or Barnes. 

“Well, a man’s got to defend himself,” Hancock said placidly. “MacCready here swears for you, and to tell the truth I was getting tired of Winlock and Barnes hanging around. But don’t go solving all your problems with violence, friend. We try to be a little more neighborly around here.” X6 had stared at Hancock’s hand on his shoulder for a long second, then nodded. 

“Understood, Mayor Hancock.” It occurred to MacCready that he’d never seen anyone touch X6 before. 

“You said you had some jobs you needed done, Hancock?” MacCready broke in. “I have a place to live, but I could use a cap or two, you know.” He inclined his head in the direction of Daisy. 

“Ah, yeah,” Hancock said. They chatted for a few nervous minutes more, and the MacCready grabbed X6 and hauled him out the door. Hancock’s mission was in the direction of the river; MacCready started to walk barely north. 

“You’re ruining my vacation,” he hissed. “Now every Gunner is going to be after my ass when it gets out that someone with me killed Winlock and Barnes, and you almost got me kicked out of Goodneighbor!”

“So kill the Gunners,” X6 said placidly. 

“It doesn’t work like that,” MacCready said, resisting the suicidal urge to punch X6 in the face. 

“Why not?” X6 asked. MacCready started to splutter out angry curses and forced himself to breathe in and calm down. 

“There’s like hundreds of Gunners, and only two of us!”

“There’s hundreds of raiders, but we always win against the camps,” X6 said. 

“That’s different,” MacCready said. “Raiders are stupid.” X6 stared at MacCready. 

“Gunners are stupid,” he said, as though MacCready was the one being slow. “The ones in Goodneighbor weren’t much of a problem.” MacCready inhaled deeply, then breathed out slowly. 

“You know what? Fine. Let’s do it. Let’s go to the overpass.”

It was late, so they spent the night in Diamond City at Vadim’s place, and if X6 heard Vadim’s comment about Lucy, he didn’t ask. At least the beer was good, and for once MacCready had enough caps to drink as much as he wanted. X6 didn’t seem to approve, but fuck him. Three beers had MacCready in a better mood, and he slept well that night, enjoying the rare opportunity to sleep on a mattress, and in the morning they set out for the Gunner’s overpass.

“So, how many of these Gunners will be at the Overpass?”

“Around twenty, I guess,” MacCready said, after taking a moment to count off the probable ground troops. X6 looked faintly insulted. 

“And you think this will be a problem why?”

“They have an assaultron and power armor,” MacCready said, crossly. “If you’re so unimpressed, you do it.”

“They’re your gunners,” X6 said. 

“You can have ‘em,” MacCready said, and started to laugh. “To hell with it. I can’t wait to see the look on those asshole’s faces after you punch a hole in their power armor.”

They made the camp around two, avoiding the super mutant behemoth. X6 looked like he wanted to fight it, but it was MacCready’s weekend, and he wasn’t going to spend it running and screaming. They had light snacks, cram for MacCready and some Institute rations for X6, then squared up.

“If you distract them, I can out the ones on the ground, and then we just have to go to the elevator.” X6’s idea of a distraction turned out to consist of walking up the camp, ignoring the warning shots fired in his direction, but it worked. Lucky asshole. MacCready sniped two people and repositioned to get the third while X6 lazily pretended to fight the last one. They reconvened in the center of the camp.

“That wasn’t hard,” X6 said. MacCready rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, and if I were made out of steel, I could also get away with not using cover. Bet you can’t avoid getting shot on the overpass.” X6 scowled at him.

“Why would I bet you anything?”

“I don’t know, for fun? I guess you’d lose anyway, so it’s not an issue.”

“If I don’t get shot, you have to stop drinking.”

“For the rest of the trip,” MacCready said. “If you get shot, you have to quit bitching about my food. Wait- no- you have to try some. If I get shot, you have to carry me to safety.”

“I'll be sure to jettison you over the side of the overpass for safekeeping,” X6 said. MacCready squinted at him.

“That better be a joke,” he said.

They took the elevator up, MacCready clutching his rifle nervously. X6 peered over the edge at the distance down, then shuffled to the center of the lift and did not look again. As they approached the top, MacCready crouched down and signaled for X6 to do the same. There was a ding- the sound of a turret starting up- and then something heavy and metal went flying over his head. X6 had thrown the turret off the overpass. MacCready stared over the edge at the sparking pile of wires.

“Uh, remind me not to get on your bad side,” he said.

“All my sides are equally well-equipped,” X6 informed him. The two of them stood down at the end of the overpass, squinting towards the end.

“I count eleven gunners, one assaultron, three turrets, and one set of power armor,” X6 said, as if he were reading off a shopping list. There was a level of crumbled overpass above them; X6 considered it, then sprinted onto the divider and leaped into the air, clearing ten feet as easily as a cat.

“You can set up back here,” he said, and trotted off.

“You can set up back here,” MacCready mocked, and set up some mines between him and the gunners, then got down on one knee and set up his rifle. It wasn't long before Gunners started to drop, red light flashing from the cracks in the overpass above. MacCready picked the ones closer to him and started to shoot; no one was paying attention to him. Click, click, click, and one for the idiot who'd decided to stand next to the turret.

“Courser,” came the yell. MacCready grinned and drilled a shot straight through the side of the person yelling. Jamison had never known when to keep his mouth shut.

A creak that set MacCready’s teeth on edge, and a chunk of overpass the size of car collapsed with a teeth-shaking crunch. A cloud of debris and dust bloomed across the Gunner’s field, destroying MacCready’s visibility. He hunched down and squinted into the scope. Something was gleaming in the darkness. MacCready’s finger twitched on the trigger. Assaultron. Slowly, the smoke cleared to reveal X6 firing his little pistol at the enemy robot. It didn't seem to be having much effect.

“I keep telling him to get a better weapon, but does he listen?” MacCready muttered, picking off some of the peons firing into X6's back before lining the Assaultron up his sights. This was going to call some attention, but he could afford to be generous. He'd just won their bet.

Assaultrons were almost as solid as coursers, the key word being almost. The thing didn't go down MacCready double tapped it in the glowy headlights, but it did stagger, body twitching strangely as it turned to face the new threat. X6, looking as annoyed as MacCready had ever seen him, snatched a rifle off the ground and jammed it through the distracted assaultron's torso. There was a sputter of light; MacCready remembered belatedly that assaultrons, like turrets, exploded when they were destroyed, and threw himself flat on the ground. There was a blast loud enough to shake the overpass.

MacCready crawled to one side, aware that people might be looking for him now, and stuck his head up. The smoke was clearing; he squinted into the billowing clouds of smoke. X6 strode out of the smoke, ash fluttering from his ruined shirt, and gave the hand signal for the all clear.

“You scared me, you bastard,” MacCready called, laughing. He had just started to walk forward when there was a crunch. He was blown backwards; mid-air he recognized that the mines he’d set down had exploded. The ground hit him in a shock of pain and he flailed wildly, coming to a stop just short of the edge of the overpass. He lay there a moment, searching himself for injuries. Nothing seemed to be broken. A piece of shrapnel was  embedded in the muscle between the thumb and pointer of his left hand. 

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” he said, and fumbled out his pistol, limping away from the edge. There was a flash of light, and then X6 leaped over the partition and grabbed a man by the throat, hauling him easily over to MacCready. Tristan, one of Barne's recruits. MacCready remembered his vaguely as the sort of coward who would kick you if you were down, but only if everyone else was doing it. 

“He threw a rock to detonate the mines,” X6 said.

“Hey there, asshole,” MacCready said, smiling, and clubbed him with the pistol. 

“MacCready, you traitorous bastard!” Tristan said. “What the fuck? Not just Winlock and Barnes, but all of us too? What are you doing?” MacCready shrugged. His head was ringing from the explosion, his body hot with adrenalin. Blood was dripping from his hand onto the pavement in little steady drips that made it hard to think, but he felt good. He’d won. The gunners were dead, and X6 was his, and he was the one in charge. The heavies were at his back for once. 

“I’m done here,” he said, relishing the power in the words, and X6 dropped Tristan to the ground with a wet crunch.

“You’re injured,” X6 said, and MacCready slapped his shoulder, grinning. 

“Yeah, but I won the bet,” he said. If it was possible for a courser to look disgruntled, X6 was giving it a go. 

They sat around the Gunners campfire while MacCready fixed his hand with supplies pilfered from the Gunner’s medical building. His hand was bleeding sluggishly; he checked his supplies one last time and yanked it out. Blood splashed down over his hand; he gave himself a poke with the stimpack to help with the pain, then started to stitch. The first push was always the worst. He sewed the cut shut and poured a little water on it, smirking. Barnes would never have let MacCready waste clean drinking water on a little cut like that, but Barnes was dead and MacCready was sitting in a pile of loot. 

“Aren’t you going to use the rest of the stimpack?” X6 asked. MacCready had forgotten that he was watching. 

“Seems like a waste,” MacCready said, taking a drink of the water. 

“You appear to be practiced at taking care of yourself,” X6 said. 

“Lots of time alone,” MacCready said, amused. “It’s not like there’s a lot of doctors out on the road, or a lot of caps to pay them with.” X6 appeared to be considering. 

“What do you do if it gets infected?” he asked. MacCready shrugged. It was strangely easy to talk to X6; X6 didn’t care. He listened, in the same way a block of wood listened, and afterwards he grunted and told MacCready to get on with the mission. 

“Take a nap. My… wife, before, was a chemist. She’d put something together, but she’s dead now, so.” He shrugged and finished his water, eyes catching on a box by the fire. Fancy Lad Snack Cakes. X6 had grabbed everything that seemed remotely useful and piled it by the fire, more wealth than MacCready knew what to do with. X6 followed his gaze and scowled.

“Still sealed and everything,” MacCready said brightly. “Open up a pack, will you? My hand is injured.” He watched gleefully as X6 opened the pack with more force than necessary, splashing crumbs and powdered sugar across his front. 

“Hurkff,” MacCready said, and started to laugh. X6’s glare made it worse. He reached over and grabbed MacCready by the throat, provoking more panicked laughter. X6’s gloves were warm against MacCready’s throat, still glowing with the warmth from the laser pistol. MacCready’s life was going to end on this shitty overpass because he couldn’t stop fucking laughing. 

“You promised you'd eat one,” he choked out, and X6 let go of him and popped a snack cake into his mouth, chewing slowly, eyebrows drawn slightly together. 

“What do you think?” MacCready asked, wheezing for air, one hand on his stomach. He’d managed to stop laughing, barely. Silence on the overpass as X6 chewed and swallowed. 

“Are these snack cakes from before the war?” X6 asked at last. MacCready snorted. 

“What, you couldn’t tell from the packaging?” X6 considered the snack cake in his hand, then sniped another one from the package. 

“I find them acceptable,” he said, and took another bite. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -[MacCready loved that.]  
> -Mac is in for a shock when he realizes X6 has feelings, but so is X6.  
> [We've got a playlist now!](http://8tracks.com/eclecticat/highway-to-hell)


	3. the house of the rising sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full fathom five thy father lies;  
> Of his bones are coral made;  
> Those are pearls that were his eyes:  
> Nothing of him that doth fade  
> But doth suffer a sea-change  
> Into something rich and strange.  
> \- Shakespeare, "The Tempest"

Night was coming on. MacCready popped a beer, scattered some mines around the perimeter, and made himself comfortable in the dead sergeant's bed. Fucker had it good. There was even a fluffy pillow to go with the blanket. MacCready propped himself up and started to read.

He was fully engrossed in the book when a shadow came between him and the light: X6, slinking around soundless as as a cat.

“You’re blocking my light,” MacCready told him.

“You didn’t notice me come in,” X6 said.

“I was ignoring you,” MacCready lied. “Quit blocking the lamp.”

“I wouldn’t expect someone from the Commonwealth to enjoy reading.”

“Shows what you know,” MacCready drawled. “I’m not even from the Commonwealth. Besides, I got into the habit when I was younger. There wasn’t exactly a ton to do around the cave.”

“Cave?” X6 asked.

“Don't worry your pretty head about it,” MacCready said, yawning. Sleep was catching up with him; Goodneighbor to the Overpass was a decent hike, and he’d lost a little blood. “Wake me up at ten. I gotta go sell this stuff in Goodneighbor before we get zapped back.” MacCready thought X6 was peering at him from behind the glasses, but it was hard to tell. X6 didn’t say anything, only turned on his heel and vanished into the darkness. Drama queen. MacCready pulled the blanket over his shoulders and sank into sleep.

 

X6 woke him in the morning by tossing rocks at the side of the building until MacCready staggered out carrying his pistol.

“Good morning,” he muttered. It took until his second Nuka-Cola before he was fully awake, the sugar dragging him out of his early morning haze.

“Nuka-Cola is not a satisfactory breakfast,” X6 said.

“Who the fuck are you, my mom?” MacCready said, amused. It had been a common refrain at Little Lamplight whenever anyone asked you for a favor, the words repeated so often they were practically an echo. Lucy had hated it, partly because she was everyone’s mom, but MacCready had thought it was funny. He shook the thought from his head.

“I am not your mother,” X6 said, frowning slightly.

“Hey, well, you never know. Quit bitching and have a snack cake.” They ate in silence, MacCready calculating the most valuable guns in his head. He loaded X6 up with loot, the courser surprisingly willing to carry the guns, and then set off for Goodneighbor.

It was a chilly day, the sky faintly overcast, but MacCready was warm in his newly insulated coat. The six years since he’d left Little Lamplight had taken a lot from him, but he’d never lost the feeling of delight he got walking under the blue sky, boots crushing the pale weeds, a gun at his side and the earthy smell of the west wind in his lungs. Life out on the open road was pretty shit, but sometimes there was the rare moment of peace.

Whatever X6’s thoughts were, he kept them to himself. His steps were steady, evenly paced, his head turning minutely as he scanned the horizon, looking at things so distant that even MacCready couldn’t see them. MacCready had disliked the courser at first; disliked his soft, even voice, his boring Institute platitudes, the creeping sensation of being _monitored_. X6 wasn’t monitoring him now. At some point they'd mutually decided against shooting each other, and turned their attention to the road, and the landmines concealed on it by pieces of trash, and the raiders in the buildings, and the insects in the trees. Walking with X6 these days felt less like being escorted by a prison guard and more like walking beside a wall in the pitch-black of night, using his fingertips to tell the way. X6 was solid, a suit of power armor come to life, moved by his own secret internal rhythms, a good companion on the open road.

They made it into Boston at the tail end of noon, with the sun just starting to move from the center of the sky. X6 didn’t like the city; his shoulders went up and he scanned more quickly, his chin moving minutely as he scanned the roofs for raiders. MacCready was amused to see that when he heard shots, he placed himself between the roof and MacCready’s body, blocking MacCready’s line of sight. Well, what was a shot to to the head to a thing like X6?

At last, Goodneighbor’s garish signs appeared in front of them.

“You can always tell Goodneighbor by the smell of chems,” MacCready said, amused at the way X6’s nose wrinkled slightly.

“Sell what you’re going to sell and let’s get back.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” MacCready said, smirking. Between this and the Institute pay, it was the richest he’d been in a long time.

They unloaded at KLEO’s. The Assaultron decided to hit on X6, ignoring his dark stares; MacCready nearly sprained a muscle trying not to laugh. Whether because she was distracted or as a favor to his partner, KLEO even gave him a decent price for all the guns. About time. MacCready left the store just behind X6, who had bolted the moment the transaction was over.

“Can we leave?” he demanded.

“Just one more stop,” MacCready said, stifling a snicker. “I’m going to Daisy’s, so if you wanna go spend time with your girl, I won’t tell.” X6 turned his back and stalked wordlessly over to a corner of Daisy’s store.

“Looking good, Daisy,” MacCready said.

“Flattery won’t get you discounts,” Daisy said, waving a finger at him.

“It’s not flattery if it’s true. Have you seen some of the guys out there? Yeesh.” Daisy laughed.

“Well, welcome to my humble store. What can I get for you?”

“Just wanted some beer, maybe any books if you have them.” They haggled cheerfully for a bit, and then MacCready paid for his things, along with some extra caps for the people watching Duncan. They charged him fifty caps a week as a favor; most people in the Commonwealth wouldn’t have taken a sick kid for anything. Too much danger of catching something yourself. MacCready hadn’t paid in three weeks, so he rounded up and left a month worth of caps, just in case he didn’t make it back anytime soon.

“Good luck out there,” Daisy said, grinning.

“You’ve given her too many caps,” X6 interjected.

“Huh? Oh, nah. These are just from some stuff I owe, from before I left the Gunners. You think I’d accidentally give her 200 caps? Get real.” X6 frowned.

“Who do you owe?”

“Just some traders back in the Capital Wasteland,” MacCready said.

“What do you even own that’s worth 200 caps?” X6 demanded.

“Aw, are you trying to keep me from being cheated?” MacCready asked. “That’s real sweet, Alexis.” X6 narrowed his eyes and stepped forward, quick as lightning. If he wanted, he could have a knife in MacCready’s side before MacCready saw him move. But he didn’t move, only loomed. MacCready stared him straight in the sunglasses.

“Enough,” X6 said.

“See you around, Daisy,” MacCready said, waving a hand, and strolled out the door. X6 stalked after him, his annoyance palpable enough to make the hairs on the back of MacCready’s neck prickle, but he didn’t say anything. They walked quietly out of the gates, MacCready half-expecting X6 to slam him against the wall and start interrogating him, but there was nothing. If X6 ever attacked him, it would be to kill him, and that was it.

They climbed the stairs of a deserted tower in silence, the wind whistling mournfully between the buildings. X6 wasn’t bothering to slow down; he made the top of the roof long before MacCready did, and gave him a cool look when he finally reached the top. MacCready shrugged. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought X6 was annoyed.

A crackle of static came in over the headset, and X6 confirmed their return to the Commonwealth. MacCready spared a glance for the debris around him; the shells of empty chems, left by dead raiders, the smears of blood on the floor, the tang of radiation in the air. His workplace, if not his home. Home was a dark cavern under the earth filled with the voices of children, a girl with stained hands and a kiss for every injury. Home was dead and buried.

It was nice to be going under the earth again, he decided, and then a flash of light took him.

 

The next week was typical; mostly scavenging parts from the surface and retrieving runaways. They’d finally decided to gift him his own headset and let him out on his own; he spent half an hour in a house stinking of dead raiders before figuring out how to work the damn thing. Fucking tech. He wanted to ask X6 about it, but the courser was off training someone else, or hunting down some poor asshole, or whatever coursers did. MacCready didn’t worry about it too much. One of the books Daisy had sold him was really interesting, and he took to spending his evenings out in the middle of the Institute reading it and having a smoke.

Time passed. X6 left, and came back. MacCready finished his book, and started on a new one, and went to the Commonwealth again, this time alone. The second vacation came and passed, and four days later he was called to the SRB instead of to the teleporter.

“What can I do for you, boss?” MacCready asked, taking a seat. Dr. Ayo shuffled his papers, the tic of a man accustomed to having papers close at hand, and didn’t speak. He glanced at the door, and then an old man walked in. He was tall, and walked like he was in horrible pain, and accustomed to it. A good target, MacCready thought, and then, no: important. There was a courser at the man’s back, and Ayo was watching him the same way the assistants watched Ayo.

“Mr. MacCready,” the old man said.

“Director,” MacCready said, trying to remember what the synths had called him. “Father? That’s not your name, is it?” The man smiled broadly.

“It’s not,” he said, and his voice was strangely warm, different from the other directors MacCready had met. “Director Jin is fine, Mr. MacCready. I have to say, I’ve been impressed by your work so far. Our coursers are no slackers, and yet you seem to be doing fine with X6.”

“I aim to please,” MacCready said. “But I feel like you didn’t come here just to tell me that, boss.”

“No, Mr. MacCready,” the older man said. “I didn’t.” A switch was flipped somewhere, and a presentation began to play on the wall. “Justin here thinks that you’re a good candidate to stay on with the Institute. You seem like a very sensible man to me, Mr. MacCready, so I don’t anticipate any trouble. In fact, we’d like to offer you some of the benefits of working with the Institute.” The presentation on the wall flickered, and changed to an image of a man overlaid with various diagrams.

“Enhanced agility and endurance,” Ayo said, speaking for the first time. “Increased muscle mass. A better immune system. Better optical focus, although yours seems to be quite formidable, Mr. MacCready.” The two of them were staring at him, and he realized he was expected to speak. Part of him wanted to say no, to protest that he’d done well enough all these years. He didn’t trust these fuckers not to put some kind of weird chip in his brain or some other science bullshit. The other part wanted to be able to punch through solid steel like X6.

“Uh, well,” he said, eyes skimming the diagrams on the wall. Speed, strength, better memory, endurance, better eyesight. Eyesight and memory were out; he didn’t need the Institute mucking with his head. Strength was useful, but not as useful as speed. “I’d like to be faster,” he decided. “X6 always runs ahead of me.” Dr. Ayo looked offended, but Director Jin chuckled.

“Does he?” MacCready nodded. The diagram on the wall flickered and switched to something else; a view of a dissected man, surrounded by incomprehensible commentary.

“Uh, what exactly are you going to do to me to make me faster?”

“It’s only a series of injections,” Dr. Ayo said. “There will be some side effects. You’ll need to gain some weight first, and you’ll need a more calorie heavy diet to keep it up. Do you know what an increased metabolism is, Mr. MacCready?”

“Like Captain America?” MacCready asked.

“Just so,” Director Jin said. Dr. Ayo looked disgusted.

“A bit like that, yes.”

They discussed the enhancements until Dr. Ayo’s willingness to explain things to MacCready ran out; towards the end MacCready was just asking in order to annoy him. Finally, Dr. Ayo got up from his desk, grabbed a book from his bookshelf and thrust it towards MacCready.

“If you’re so interested, look at this,” he barked.

“Gee, thanks,” MacCready said. The book was thicker than his forearm.

“We’ll put you on enhanced rations. Your BMI is still very low, but once you’ve gained a few pounds you should be ready.”

“Uh, about that. Is there any way I could get a working stove? I’m kind of used to making my own food, and the stuff you guys have down here…” MacCready struggled to find a way to say that they tasted like shit that wouldn’t get him taken out back and shot. “It’s not what I’m used to.”

“What would you even cook?” Ayo asked. “That sort of food has parasites.”

“Not if you know how to cook them,” MacCready said. Ayo looked like he’d never held a knife in his life, never mind butchered a Brahmin. He probably thought that everyone on the surface ate their meat raw and straight from the animal.

“Very well,” the director said. “I think we can make it happen. Anything else, Mr. MacCready?” MacCready shook his head, and the director dismissed him.

 

Whether because he’d annoyed Ayo or just because the Institute was trying to get their money’s worth, the next series of missions were brutal. He and X6 were out for four days clearing an entire sector of farmland up north, and MacCready was constantly exhausted. The area was brimming with Brotherhood patrols and deathclaws and a new group of raiders who’d figured out how to make Protectrons so nasty even X6 agreed that it was best to pick them off one by one.

“Didn’t think you had the common sense in you,” MacCready muttered as they huddled up against the wall, waiting for the Protectrons to go by. Damn, but the things were dumb.

“If I were alone, I would certainly attempt to kill all those raiders, but I understand that you are too delicate to carry out such an operation.” MacCready grunted.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not a tank. Get me to a distance or up a tree and I’ll snipe them for you. Do you think deathclaws can climb trees?”

“I doubt it,” X6 said. There was a distant roar. Up here, there weren’t many buildings for cover in this area, just the anemic trees. “I expect we are about to find out.”

As it happened, deathclaws couldn't climb trees, but they were smart enough to slash at tree trunks and their skulls were even more impervious to bullets than X6’s. MacCready ended up clinging to his gun and firing wildly down at the thing while the tree he was in swayed and shook. X6 had vanished, probably to go fight some raiders. MacCready hoped they died soon. There was the distant sound of a laser weapon being fired. Too far away to be of any help. MacCready groaned and fumbled his pack open one-handed while clinging to the tree. A pair of bottlecap mines were in the bottom. Good enough.

“Geronimo,” MacCready yelled, and chucked them down onto the deathclaw’s head. The ground trembled with the force of the explosion, and there was a horrible creak as the tree came crashing down. MacCready landed with a crash and felt something tear in his ankle. He started to swear, then froze. The deathclaw. Was it still alive? He glanced to the side, not daring to turn his head, and saw it lying there motionless.

“Fuck, yeah! Take that, you piece of shit! X6, are you around here?”

“I am nearby,” X6 said, and came loping up out of the fog.

“You get the raiders?”

“I did,” X6 said, glancing at the wreckage of the tree. “You… killed the deathclaw.”

“Sure did,” MacCready muttered. “All by myself. While you were off playing tag with the raiders. Who’s the tank and who’s the DPS here?” He tried to stand up, but his ankle buckled. He sighed and flopped onto the ground, then started to bind it up with the bandages around his leg.

“We ran out of explosives a day ago,” X6 observed.

“Bottlecap mines,” MacCready grunted, pulling the fabric tight over his ankle. “Used to make them as a kid. It ain’t that hard. Made them at the workbench while you were patrolling.” X6 stared at MacCready a long moment, clearly evaluating.

“What?”

“You’re not like other people from the Commonwealth,” he said.

“Yeah, because I’m from the Capital Wasteland,” MacCready said sourly. “It’s almost as shit here as it is there.” In truth, the Capital Wasteland was divided into two zones; the Brotherhood controlled areas, where you couldn’t take a shit without having to pay a toll to the Brotherhood, and the outlying areas, which had become super concentrated with super mutants and other menaces that had been displaced by the ever-expanding Brotherhood.

A low rumble, and a missile flew past the two of them. Fuck. MacCready wasn’t going to be able to run away from a Sentrybot in this condition.

“Stay here,” X6 said, and sprinted away from MacCready.

“Use a better weapon,” MacCready yelled after him. Another missile was fired and X6’s reply, if there was one, was lost in the explosion. Fuck. MacCready needed to get behind cover. The corpse of the deathclaw was a small mountain. It would do. He crawled behind it slowly, not wanting to set off the Sentrybot’s sensors, and finished wrapping his ankle. In the distance, he heard the sound of X6 taunting the Sentrybot for sloppy tactics.

Two of a kind, MacCready thought grimly. He waited a few moments, then grabbed his rifle and peeked cautiously over the top of the Deathclaw. Fuck it. The Sentrybot was rolling away from him towards X6, who was doing stupid acrobatics to avoid the missiles. At least he wasn't trying to just absorb the fire like he usually did; good armor spoiled people, made them sloppy.

A high whistle came from the Sentrybot and steam poured from its back.. The thing was overheating. The back panel opened, revealing a glowing power core. MacCready fired desperately into the exposed core, landing a handful of shots before the panel closed. He threw himself to the ground as the thing’s head whipped around and prayed that it hadn’t noticed him. The heart stopping sound of a missile reached his ears, and then an explosion rocked the ground fifty feet to his left. The thing was firing blindly. He curled tightly into a ball and waited, counting silently in his head. One hundred. One hundred and one. One hundred and two. One hundred and three.

Another missile landed a hundred feet to MacCready’s right, jarring his injured ankle. He bit down the urge to swear. One hundred and five. One hundred and six. At one-ten, he stuck his head over the top and scanned the area. X6 was limping slightly in the distance, and the Sentrybot was advancing on him. MacCready scanned the area for a distraction. Raider corpse, downed Protectron, raider corpse, raider corpse, raider corpse. There! A mine left behind at one of the raider fortifications. MacCready took aim, fired, and missed. X6 dodged a missile, but the shock tossed him a few feet. MacCready shot again. Click. Empty. He reloaded and fired, and an explosion shook the fortifications.

The Sentrybot paused, then continued to advance towards X6. MacCready inhaled, then lifted his gun and fired two shots directly into the back of the thing’s head, then ducked again. Silence, and then the whistling sound of the thing overheating. MacCready fumbled his gun over the top of the Deathclaw again and saw that the Sentrybot was staring directly at him. Steam whistled from the back, out of range of MacCready’s gun.

He ducked down and curled into a ball. Fuck, he thought, eyes squeezed close. He’d never gotten Duncan his cure.

The missile hit the deathclaw in a spray of flesh. MacCready was knocked back a few feet and lay there, afraid to move. Another missile detonated behind him, and in the distance there was the sound of a laser pistol firing. Fuck. The Sentrybot was getting close, the earth vibrating with its approach. Gradually the ringing in his ears faded, and he heard the sound of X6 shouting. He’d never heard X6 shout before.

“Move!” X6 yelled. MacCready stuck his head up. The Sentrybot had stopped moving. It was about to explode. MacCready scrambled up and ran, tripping over debris and bits of bone and flesh as he scrambled forward.

A set of three beeps, and the ground shook with the Sentrybot’s detonation. MacCready stumbled  few more steps, propelled by the force of the blast, and then sank to his knees, gasping for air. His ankle was screaming with pain. He’d sat down into something wet.

“Goddamn robots,” he said, and waited for X6, chest heaving. It wasn’t long. X6 came stumbling out of the fog, the front of his black suit marred by a circle of fire damage. MacCready stared. It looked like a missile had hit him. He was limping somewhat.

“Can you walk?” X6 asked. MacCready sucked in a breath and jammed his gun into the ground, then used the handle to push himself up. It hurt like a son of a bitch. His ankle wasn’t taking any weight. Involuntary tears formed in his eyes, but he forced himself up.

“Is the area clear?” he asked. X6 nodded.

“So, all done?  Can we get back yet?”

“There’s no transport in this weather. The rad storm interferes with the signal.” It was beginning to storm, the sky crackling with a pale green glow.

“Fuck,” MacCready said.

 

They found a tiny old shack, probably used as a drop point by the raiders, and holed up. The drafty wooden planks wouldn’t do anything for the rads, but at least they’d be moderately dry. MacCready had an extra stimpack hidden in his coat pocket; he unwrapped his ankle and gave himself a few pokes while X6 wedged pieces of wood in one of the windows.

“You kept an extra stimpack,” X6 observed. “My leg has stopped bleeding, but I believe I have incurred some burn damage from the missile.”

“If you wanted some, you should have asked. There’s not much left.” MacCready held out the stimpack to X6, who contemplated his outstretched hand before taking the stimpack.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you take one before,” MacCready commented. X6 didn’t say anything, only shrugged out of his coat. MacCready had never seen him out of his coat, either. It was stupid, but MacCready hadn’t really thought about the fact that X6 had arms and legs just like a normal person, but he did. Standing there in his thin white undershirt and untying his shoes, he could have been a person.

Well, maybe a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Normal people didn’t have muscles like that. Maybe after they put MacCready’s enhancements in, he’d be more like X6. Fast. Would everything seem slow, or would he just react faster? People said MacCready was quick at reloading his gun, but he didn’t feel it. He just did it on automatic. The thought made him smile. Automatic, just like a courser. With any luck, he’d never get so dour he started wearing black; he’d had enough gloom in Little Lamplight to last him a lifetime.

“You’re staring,” X6 said, and MacCready realized that he’d zoned out.

“Not a whole lot else to look at around here,” he said, and looked away.

“You could keep watch,” X6 said.

“I could stare through the cracks in the shack, sure. “ It stank of blood in the shack; X6’s blood, the deathclaw’s blood. Blood and the ozone stink of the storm. MacCready breathed out and leaned against the wall, trying to ignore the terrible ache in his leg. Next to him, X6 put his coat back on, then sat down next to MacCready.

“This mission sucked,” MacCready muttered. X6 didn’t say anything. “That’ll teach me to listen to the people in the armory. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll need any heavy guns for this mission.’ Someone fucked up their intel.” There was a long silence in the shack, X6 silent as a stone. MacCready was vaguely aware that he was thirsty. He wondered whether it would it be worth it to drink the irradiated rainwater, mulling over the pros and cons. One kind of pain vs another. He had just decided to wait for another hour before trying it when X6 spoke.

“They knew. They’re testing you. You’re slated to get enhancements put in, right? They always run you on a hard mission before, to see how well you can do on your own.”

“You couldn’t have warned me?”

“Then they would just have run you on a hard mission without me,” X6 replied.

“Huh,” MacCready said. The wind was whistling through a crack in the wood; he shifted to get comfortable. “You speaking from personal experience?”

“Yes,” X6 said. A long pause. Just when MacCready thought that X6 wasn’t going to say anything, he spoke.

“I did very well. I eliminated 5 raiders on my own, although I barely remember it. I have been reset since then, and the process makes my memories blurry.”

“Wiped?” Right, they had that nasty looking chair back in the bureau, for synths who misbehaved. “I have trouble imagining you doing something that would get you in trouble,” MacCready said.

“I did not. They put my whole generation through after something happened.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. That’s why they wiped us.”

“Huh.” Outside, the wind howled, driving rain against the shack, but X6 and MacCready were just clear of the spray. Wiped, huh. Typical Institute, to assign their own meanings to expressions that already meant something.

“Could be worse,” MacCready said to X6, thinking of all the times he’d been ordered to wipe someone out. X6 turned to look at him, one blue eye visible through his cracked sunglasses. MacCready grinned at him. “You could be dead.”

 

The storm lifted at last, and they radioed back home. X6 and MacCready landed on the pad with a lurch that made MacCready sway; only X6’s hand on his arm kept him from kissing the floor. They staggered to the medical bay, where a harsh faced nurse refused to give MacCready water or painkillers unless he changed into a weird dress she called a ‘scrub’. When the medicine finally did come, MacCready gulped it down gratefully. He was beginning to feel a little light-headed, so he sat, half-asleep in his chair while the nurse bustled around the room, occasionally pausing to give him shots. He had almost nodded off entirely when she spoke.

“One last shot,” she said, and injected him with a final syringe.

“Uh, I don’t know if these are working. My ankle still hurts.”

“Ankle? These are for the surgery.”

“Surgery?” MacCready asked. He stood, but the room was blurry, and his legs swayed. “I just want to go to sleep.”

“Very well. Lie down on the bed, and we’ll have someone take you back to your room.” MacCready shook his head and stumbled down the hall, one hand against the wall to hold himself up. X6 was still sitting in the waiting room. He stood and caught MacCready when he stumbled.

“MacCready, status?”

“I need to get back to my room,” MacCready muttered.

“Come and put him down over here,” the nurse instructed. Shit. She’d followed him. MacCready started to protest, but X6 had already lifted him up and begun to walk. Nausea welled in his stomach: he tried to hold onto X6 and was dumped onto a surgical bed like a sack of tatos. The nurse was strapping his legs in.

“Hey,” he protested. The room was spinning. Panic was seeping in through the slow haze of painkillers. What were they going to do to him?

“Say calm,” X6 instructed. “Focus on my voice. Now, close your eyes and count to ten.” MacCready tried to get up, and X6 placed one hand on his chest, holding him down. “Listen to me, MacCready. Close your eyes and count to ten.”

“I don’t want to go through surgery,” MacCready said. He was -- he wanted to scream. It was the only thing left to him, but there was no one to hear. No one was going to rescue him. His heart was thumping wildly in his chest, his breaths crowding in on themselves. Sleep was already licking at his consciousness. “Please,” he said, tugging uselessly at his restraints. “I don’t want this.”

“You’ll survive,” X6 said, and MacCready could have sworn there was a faint smile on his face. Sleep was closing in; MacCready’s eyelids fluttered shut against his will. The last thing he heard was the soft sound of X6’s voice. “Welcome to the Program.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- X6/KLEO=OTP.  
> \- Listen, buddy, if I'm going to side with the fucking Institute, I want to be able to get sick robot enhancements, capiche?  
> \- Shout-out to Soundssimpleright for beta reading!  
> \- Catch me at [nomette](http://nomette.tumblr.com/) for more yelling about robots.


	4. bat country

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin." - Die Verwandlung, Franz Kafka

MacCready jerked upright and banged his head on something dangling overhead.

“God fucking damn-” he said, and tried to swat the equipment away. There was a loud bang, and a stinging pain in his hand. A light was shining in his eyes. Very slowly, MacCready lifted his hand to his face to shade his eyes and froze.

X6 was standing over his hospital bed and laughing. Laughing like a human being, laughing like he’d never seen anything funnier. MacCready started to try and get up, but X6 reached out, still chuckling, and out a hand on his shoulder, forcing him back down.

“You don’t know how to move yet,” X6 told him.

“No kidding,” MacCready said, panic making his head bubbly. “What did you do to me?”

“I didn’t do anything,” X6 replied serenely.

“This is not the time to be funny, X,” MacCready snapped.

“Your metabolism and reflexes have been adjusted for maximum combat viability,” X6 said.  “The mitochondria in your body--” MacCready groaned.

“Come _on._ Quit messing around and tell me what I’m supposed to do already.”

“I have not created any mess,” X6 said, like he thought he was being funny. Fucking coursers. MacCready was so pissed it took several rounds of X6’s stupid breathing exercises before he was deemed sufficiently calm.

“Get up as slowly as you can manage,” X6 instructed. “Like you’re doing a sit-up.”

“I am sitting up, I guess,” MacCready muttered. He pushed aside the thing above his head and carefully got to his feet. He was in a small white waiting room, still dressed in the hospital scrubs. There was a faint red line running down his forearms, like someone had scratched him. MacCready ran his thumb down the line, wondering. Injections his ass. They’d put something in him, but he didn’t feel heavier. In fact, his arms felt weirdly light.

“This is like the first time I had  jet,” he muttered.

“You may be experiencing some disorientation,” X6 drawled.

“You fucker,” MacCready said. “Why are you in here with me? Couldn’t they have sent someone actually helpful?”

“It’s easy for people who have just gotten their enhancements put in to injure themselves or others,” X6 said, smirking a little bit. “It’s logical for a courser to accompany you until you’ve gotten used to your movement.”

“Movement, huh?” MacCready said, and stuck an arm out in front of him. “I feel fine.”

“You can’t tell how fast you’re moving,” X6 said, amused. He walked up to MacCready and tried to grab his collar, but MacCready jerked backwards, out of his way. “You wouldn’t have been able to do that last week.”

“Last week? How long have I been out?”

“A few days.” X6 said. “You must be thirsty. Drink some water.” MacCready squinted at him suspiciously. There was a cup of water on a small tray on the other side of the room. Feeling like an idiot, MacCready walked over. Slowly, carefully, he picked up the metal cup. The steel crumpled slightly under his touch; he stared at it, alarmed, and lifted it as delicately as if it were a mine. Moving slowly, he managed to bring it to his mouth and finish the glass.

“Ha,” he said triumphantly, and the cup crumpled in his hand.

“You seem to be adjusting quickly,” X6 said as MacCready stared at the crumpled steel. It was thin. If he’d tried, he could probably have bent it by stepping on it. Curious, he put his thumb against the steel and watched it rip as easily as paper.

“The strength boost is a side effect, and not as significant as that of a courser, but it is… notable. Of course, you were starting from a sub-standard place.”

“Save it,” MacCready said, and put the cup down. “How do I get out of here?”

“You have to get the key,” X6 said.

“Where’s the key?” MacCready demanded. X6 smiled. Out of all the strangeness that had happened, that was the strangest of all- X6 smiling, as if MacCready had joined some club or crossed some invisible line without noticing.

 _Welcome to the program,_ X6 had said.

“Where’s the key?” MacCready repeated.

“Around my neck,” X6 said, and took a step back. “Come and get it.”

 

MacCready was exhausted and covered in scratches and bruises by the time he’d managed to snatch the passkey from around X6’s neck. The bastard hadn’t even used his hands; he’d just moved around the room, always just out of MacCready’s reach, pausing only to laugh when MacCready miscalculated and tripped or crashed into a wall.

MacCready stalked down the hall and back to his room. Damn, he was thirsty. There were only five cups in his kitchen. He stared at them sourly, then decided he was too tired for delicate work and drank directly from the tap. The knob made a grating sound when he turned it, but didn’t break, at least. He pushed it back into place with his pinky, then went to the fridge. It was dicey getting his steaks out and turning the stove on, but at last the steak was sizzling away.

MacCready’s mouth watered at the smell the meat gave off. It was raw, likely to make him sick, maybe even kill him, but he couldn’t stop staring at it. His whole stomach was a single ache, like he’d been two weeks on the road eating flower petals just to stay alive. Was there anything else he could eat? He remembered the snack cakes in his cabinet and hastily brought them out, ripping the door clean from its hinges in his haste. He’d fix it later. He was so _hungry_.

He opened the snack cakes he’d stashed and stuffed one in his mouth. Immediate overwhelming relief flooded his body, but it only lasted as long as the snack cake did in his mouth. He was still starving. Another one would make him feel better. He was opening a second box before awareness caught up with him. A box of cakes was at least a day’s worth of food, not a meal. He put the second box back, then flipped his steak over. What was happening to him? He couldn’t be this hungry all the time; he’d go mad. He gathered up the broken cupboard door and the screws that had scattered on the floor and set them aside.

His comics glinted at him from the shelf- he started to reach out, then snatched his hand back. What if he ripped one? Goddamn it. Did he- there, the textbook he’d been given! He opened it slowly, and  reached out to turn the page. One, two… there was a loud rip as the page peeled away entirely. Goddammit. MacCready had flipped through most of the first chapter when the smell of food reminded him that he was still starving. He sprang to his feet and ran to the stove, where his steak was beginning to burn.

He snatched his tongs from the counter and they crumpled beneath his hand. God fucking dammit. The steak was sizzling, the warm smell of it making his stomach growl and his jaws ache. He devoured the steak straight from the pan, so hungry the heat barely registered. His fork crunched and he tossed it aside; fuck it, he’d eat this damn thing with his bare hands. The pan emptied; until at last there was nothing left at all, not even fat drippings. Exhaustion descended on him, bleak and heavy. He staggered to his bed and passed out.

 

A dim tapping woke MacCready from his sleep; he sat up, swung his feet over the edge of the bed, and walked groggily over to the door. The button to open to the door fizzled when he hit it, and he remembered the events of the day before.

There was a courser on the other side of the door, but it wasn’t X6. The courser was pale, with dark hair and eyes. MacCready felt a jolt of recognition, like he’d seen her somewhere before.

“I see things are going well,” it said, looking past him into the room. MacCready glanced behind him. His coffee table was covered in ripped textbook pages, and fancy lad snack cake wrappers covered the floor around it. The broken tongs were on the floor, next to the broken fork and cupboard door.

“It’s not like this shit comes with an instruction manual,” MacCready said crossly.

“If it did, would you be able to read it?” the courser asked. Her face and tone didn’t change, but there was something in the flat delivery, something around her eyes, in the way she carefully didn’t smile…

“Ace?” MacCready said slowly. “You were in the Gunners…” They hadn’t been close, but MacCready remembered her. She’d been a popular commander, known for her skill with automatic weapons and her love of explosives until the day she mysteriously disappeared.

The courser stared at him, and then it grinned.

“You always had a good memory for faces, MacCready.” The grin was unsettling, a hair too happy for the situation. MacCready ignored it.

“Well, come on in,” he said. “I, uh, I’m having some trouble with the new hardware.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Still, could be worse. A lot of new coursers try to get into fistfights as soon they’re upgraded, break their own arms. We’re stronger, but we’re not that strong.” MacCready shrugged, then squinted suspiciously at Ace.

“You’re not here to beat me up, are you?” he asked, half expecting her to grab one of his comics and run.

“Why, is that your kink?”

“Hell no,” MacCready spluttered. “You're the one in black leather.” Ace snorted.

“Fair. Nah, I’m here to help you learn how to run, jump up things.” She paused, then ran up the side of the wall, did a neat little flip over MacCready’s head and landed behind him. Something round and cold came to rest against MacCready’s spine- a gun barrel.

“Bang,” Ace said matter-of-factly. “You’re dead.”

“Guess I’d better go back to bed, then,” MacCready said. “We gonna practice in here?”

“For now,” Ace said, and sat down on MacCready’s couch. “Show me how you walk.”

 

Ace was a better instructor than X6, if not a good one; she clearly enjoyed fucking with him. MacCready was starting to think it was a courser thing. She made him practice walking, standing, running, standing on his head and walking on his hands, all while yelling like she was a sergeant and he was the rawest of recruits.

As MacCready was doing a third lap of the living room on his hands, she stuck her foot out, forcing him to execute a clumsy half-flip to avoid it. “Meh, good enough,” she said, and stood, if you could call a movement that happened in a half-second ‘standing.’

“How do you do that?” MacCready demanded.

“Quickly,” she said, and grinned. Her hand shot out towards MacCready’s face; he stumbled backwards. Ace slid smoothly into his face and tapped him on the tip of the nose.

“Boop,” she said, and slapped him. It was a love-tap, barely enough to make his skin red, but he felt it in his whole body. He was cornered by a predator much bigger than him, and it could decide to stop playing with him at any moment.

“Come on, kid,” Ace said. The corner of her mouth quirked. Her fist grazed his face as he threw himself backwards,  trying to get out of range. She came at him like an avalanche, attacking from all angles, her hands striking and poking at his face. Adrenaline kicked in; he was being backed into a corner. He vaulted over the couch rather than be trapped, and Ace vaulted after him. Fuck!

The wall was on his side; he ran onto the table, jumped onto the couch, rolled, and just managed to get his gun out of the holster before Ace was on him. He jammed his gun against her ribs, breathing hard. Ace’s hand was splayed across the side of his head; she ran her thumb delicately across his eyebrow. One movement, and she could gouge his eye out before he knew he was blind.

The world tilted. A thump, and MacCready was flipped onto his back. Ace was pressing his gun against the side of his head.

“Not bad,” she said.

“What does good look like?” MacCready asked, panting.

“I’ll let you know if I ever see it,” Ace said, and stood. MacCready took a brief inventory of his limbs to make sure they were all there and followed. Ace was tilting her head back and forth, considering his gun. MacCReady sat there, heart hammering in his chest, and tried not to obviously gasp for air. His palms were sweaty. Ace might be a courser, but she wasn’t tame.

“Too bad,” she said, turning it over and examining the handle.  “Looks like this was a pretty nice gun. You’re either going to have to get it reinforced and throw off the balance or get a new one.” She tossed the gun at MacCready, who barely managed to catch it. He squinted at the handle; there were little dents in the metal. Dents that fit where his hand had gripped the pistol. He fit his fingers disbelievingly in the grooves.  

“What the heck,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted to be faster…”

“Yeah, it doesn’t really work like that. It’s kind of a package deal, because you need the extra muscle to work with the better reflexes and the enhanced metabolism to run the whole package.” She glanced at MacCready and barked out a laugh.  “Oh, you really didn’t ask for this, did you? Pro-tip: the scientists don’t really care about what you want.”

“I fucking got that,” MacCready said, squinting at his hand. “I thought I was going to be able to run a little faster, not signing up to snap my dick off the next time I try to jack it.” Ace laughed.

“You know, I’ve never heard of that as a method to practice fine control, but at least you’ll be motivated to get it right.” MacCready winced.

“Does X6 also have a secret personality, or is it just you?”

“It’s just the ex-infiltrator units,” Ace assured him. “And I don’t really have a personality, since I’m not sentient. You know.” She winked. MacCready felt profoundly uncomfortable.

“Uh, right. Anyway, what were we doing?”

“I was going to kick you in the head,” Ace said. MacCready ducked just in time to dodge Ace’s heel and dropped into a defensive crouch, but no further blows seemed to be incoming.

“Do we have to do this in here?” he yelped.

“Would you rather do this in front of a bunch of coursers?” Ace asked, amusement clear in her voice.

“My comics books are in here,” MacCready muttered, backing up, his hands still lifted. “Couldn’t you just like… actually teach me?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Ace asked.

“I’m a big fan of not getting kicked in the head, actually,” MacCready said sourly.

“Oh, well,” Ace said, and turned on one heel. “In that case, you’re done. Your reflexes are solid. Just don’t overthink it, and you should be fine.” She punched the button on the door and left.

“What,” MacCready said, and hurried after her. Ace’s walk was different in the hall; she moved to the usual stiff courser metronome, arms and legs moving in predictable, repetitive motions.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“Are you interested in improving your skills?” Ace said, her voice totally flat.

“Sure, whatever,” MacCready said.

“Follow me,” she said. Ace led him down into the Institute, past long, identical hallways and robots busily scrubbing at clean surfaces. MacCready had a good sense of direction, but it was easy to get lost in the Institute: every floor, every hallway was exactly the same, scrubbed indistinguishably clean, as if the robots were engaged in the task of scrubbing all the uniqueness out of the world.

They paused at a doorway MacCready hadn’t noticed before, the cracks barely visible in the wall. There was no handle, no clear way to open the door. He squinted at the sides, looking for a handle.

“You have good eyes,” Ace said, and tapped the door.

“I’m not the best sniper in the commonwealth for nothing,” MacCready replied as the wall opened, revealing a set of stairs leading down into the earth. Unlike the rest of the Institute, the hallway was badly lit, lights swinging from overhead. It had the look of a trap, of a bad mission.

“We go down here to train,” she said blithely, and walked down into the earth. MacCready followed, his body still oddly light. His fingertips were tingling. He ran his hands over his forearms and found a small piece of dried blood; further examination revealed a new scar. Whatever they’d done, it had healed, leaving only a thin line on his arm to show it had happened at all. MacCready plucked a bullet from his hat and twirled it between his fingers, then crushed it between two fingers, marveling at how easily the metal cracked. Gunpowder spilled out over his fingers.

A rush of feral pleasure washed through him, and for the first time since he’d joined the Institute, he was fiercely glad that he’d shot Kellogg. This was power, real power. He threw the bullet aside and hurried into the next room.

The room was high-walled, white, and closed off. There were no doors other than the one they’d come through, and no windows. MacCready grinned. High up on one wall, there was a small smudge- as if someone had left a footprint on the wall. Overhead, a set of pipes, and the high, unlit darkness of the room, concealing an exit.

The wall was firm under his foot; he ran sideways and up, pedaling wildly, and landed on top of the pipe. He’d gone ten feet up the side of the wall without a problem; a whisper of displaced air and Ace joined him on top of the pipe.

“Good progress,” she said blithely. “Your form could use a little work.”

MacCready laughed. He flipped backwards over the edge of the pipe, laughing, as light-headed as if he’d been drunk, and landed on his feet. His head was buzzing. There was a handle on the bottom of the pipe; he jumped for it, swung upwards, arms flailing, and balanced on top of the pipe, grinning. Ace nodded.

“Let’s begin,” she said. He swung at her and she dodged and retaliated; they ran back and forth on top of the pipe, arms and legs scything through the air. Ace was faster than him; smaller too, more experienced.  Ace swiped at his legs; he laughed, jumping backwards, recklessly pleased with himself. His foot slipped, and he let himself go over the edge and caught the rail below, then tried to scramble up, but Ace hooked her ankle under his arm and tossed him off the pipe. The two of them went crashing to the ground. MacCready landed on his back, Ace standing over him, her foot still planted on his chest.

“Status?” Ace said. MacCready grabbed her ankle and flipped her to the left, rolling to his feet on the right. Above him, the ceiling, the pipe; next to him, the wall, easily scalable. He was uncornered, suddenly, gleefully free of his previous restrictions.

“I feel like a god,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- You are now a member of the [Institute] faction!


	5. ghost riders in the sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be  
> alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead.
> 
> Richard Siken, “Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede”

MacCready snatched a crow out of the air as it flew by and presented it to X6.

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m touching that thing,” X6 said, flat. They were standing on a tree branch about twenty feet off the ground- as a sniper, MacCready had always known that people didn’t look up, but it was one thing to stay ensconced in a nest, and another to travel freely from perch to perch, quick as a bird. Quicker, even. MacCready grinned at the trapped crow and tossed it upwards, where it vanished into the sky.

“If you’re finished fondling the wildlife, we have a mission to complete,” X6 said.

“Yeah, yeah,” MacCready said, grinning. He hopped down, savoring the thrill of making a jump that would have crippled him the day before. Twenty feet, easy, and the only effect was that his knees buckled a little. X6 landed next to him, light as a shadow.

“How do you do that, anyway?” MacCready asked.

“Practice,” X6 said. MacCready thought for a moment that the corner of his mouth quirked up slightly, but it was hard to tell.

“You know, for a robot that was supposedly built to make people’s lives easier, you sure seem to enjoy giving me a hard time.”

“When I decide to give you a hard time, MacCready, you’ll know it. Now come on.” Before MacCready could reply, X6 dashed forward towards their goal.

“Hey,” MacCready shouted. The chase was on.

 

Their target was an old insane asylum; apparently some scientist had stashed interesting tech in the bottom. MacCready wasn’t too worried about the details. X6 had memorized the mission briefing, and that was good enough for him.

When the time came, he’d grab what he was told to grab and leave the rest, and in the meantime the Commonwealth was his playground. The Institute called it “developing his skills.” MacCready called it tag. X6 was a surprisingly good partner; MacCready thought he might even be pleased that they were now running on a similar level.

He was a little disappointed when they finally reached the asylum and drew to a halt; he’d never much liked running, but running with the enhancements was something else. It was like being five again and running and vaulting just for the sheer uninhibited joy of motion. He was starting to understand why all the coursers went everywhere at top speed.

There were three raiders shooting up outside the asylum door; he drew his gun from his back and fired, bang bang bang, and dropped them all.

“Right between the eyes,” MacCready said, smug, and stepped over the corpses.

“At this point, anything else would be a surprise,” X6 said.

“Aw,” MacCready said, throwing open the doors. “I knew you were impressed with me!” The inside of the asylum smelled like blood and dust and two centuries of accumulated filth.

“Impressed?” X6 said, and stepped in close to MacCready, so close they could barely have fit a bullet between them sideways. MacCready had to crane his neck upwards to see his face reflected in the sunglasses; the Institute might have enhanced MacCready, but they’d built X6, and built him big. This close, MacCready could feel the heat that rose off the courser, as if he truly were some infernal machine.

“I know what you’re capable of, mercenary,” X6 said, every syllable slow and precise. “You can do better than just that.” MacCready’s heart was pounding. Every instinct was screaming at him to get away, to hide, to shoot, to do something, but he’d been scared before. He’d been terrified out of his wits before, sure he was going to die, and he hadn’t flinched then. He wasn’t going to flinch now.

He took out a cigarette and lit it, not breaking eye contact. This close, X6 was more wall than human being. Had it really been necessary to make X6’s shoulders so broad?

“Playing hard to get, huh? You’ve had these enhancements longer. Why don’t you impress _me_?”

“You,” X6 said, “have a sensible fear of me. I could break you in half.”

“That’s not impressive! A supermutant could do that.” He inhaled hard on his cigarette and smiled when X6 turned away in anticipation of smoke.

“I could kill every man in this house without breaking a sweat,” X6 said.

“Sure,” MacCready said amiably. “I’ll race you.”

“Through the house?”

“Through the raiders,” MacCready said. His voice came out more confident than he really felt. X6 tilted his head very slightly and smiled. The smile made a fresh round of sweat break out on the back of MacCready’s neck.

“I’ll give you a head start,” X6 said. MacCready didn’t need to be told. He went. Three raiders were in the lobby; he shot them without any trouble and stooped to pick the bullets out of their pockets. When he stooped, X6 was in the doorway. When he stood up, X6 was gone, vanished like the wind.

“Some head start!” MaCready said. The only response was silence- silence, and in the distance, a single malevolent chuckle. Trying not to clutch at his gun, MacCready hurried on. A few raiders had been drawn by the sound of his gun; he shot one, missed the next, and retreated to avoid their makeshift grenades. One, two, three- he peeked out, shot one in the torso, and jerked backwards just as fire flared against the side of the wall.

“It had to be grenades,” he muttered. He really didn’t want to find out what his new burn resistance was. He retreated and ran along the wall, over the doorway, then hurried down the hallway on the other side. A little maneuvering put him behind the previous group of raiders. His pistol wavered as he decided who to shoot first, and then he saw the grenade box.

The resulting fireball filled the hallway. A rush of hot air washed past him, smelling of gasoline and cooked meat.

“Score one for me,” he said, and turned around. His foot bumped something. He hadn’t done much more than scan the room for movement before turning around. He hadn’t noticed the corpse lying still on the ground. A great force had wrenched the head all the way around.

“Point for X6,” MacCready said, amused, and hurried on.

X6 had apparently taken it as a personal challenge to avoid being seen by either MacCready or the raiders; he passed through the house like a shadow, leaving a trail of broken necks and perforated skulls in his wake. There weren’t any pipes or obvious ways for him to travel along the ceiling, but the corpses MacCready found suggested that he’d found a way. The sight of a raider with a broken neck and a boot print stamped across his face made him break into nervous laughter- he couldn’t stop imagining X6 descending from the ceiling like batman.

His laughter summoned a few of the remaining raiders, and there was a brief gunfight which ended when he remembered that he’d brought a few grenades from the Institute armory. It felt so good to walk through the dying flames and over the mangled corpses and not have to stoop and search through the bloody remains for supplies. He didn’t need those things any more. He’d risen above that.

When the next set of raiders came, he didn’t bother with caution. Dumb, drugged things; they didn’t know how to react when he vaulted onto the wall and tossed a grenade into their midst. He didn’t bother wasting a bullet on the last one; it was the work of a few seconds to wrench the crowbar from her stunned hands and deliver the final blow. He felt like a child crushing ants, filled with the simple, uncomplicated joy of violence.

It was a strange role-reversal: MacCready out in the open, taking the most obvious shots and forcing confrontations, and X6 behind him in the shadows, silent and deadly. Once or twice, he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise and had the dizzy premonition that something was watching him, but there was never anything there when he looked. After the third time, he stopped looking.

Finally, after a long gun battle, he reached the elevator. A ghoul was propped up against the counter, bleeding heavily; he didn’t realize until after he’d shot them that it was someone he’d known. Edward Deegan, a mercenary working around Bunker Hill. Ah, well. Less competition. He rifled through the dead man’s things. The stimpack was still warm from the ghoul’s fading body heat when MacCready slipped it into his back pocket. Ghouls always ran warm, as if the radiation was cooking them from the inside, but this ghoul would be cold soon enough.

MacCready finished his scavenging, a little amused at himself for slipping into old habits, and hit the button on the elevator. He half expected X6 to be inside, but the elevator was on a different floor. He waited a bit, vaguely aware of a prickling sense of unease, then paused. He tilted his head sharply backwards and made contact with the solid expanse of X6’s chest.

“How did you know?” X6 asked. MacCready hadn’t known, but he’d thought- well, he’d thought that it was the sort of trick X6 would find amusing. For all the courser’s seriousness, MacCready could recognize a cat playing with a toy.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said flippantly. “You’re getting predictable, X.”

The elevator came, and MacCready strolled in and grabbed a spot with his back to the wall. A rush of relief hit him at finally having the courser in his sight, not trailing at his back like an ominous wind. My life has gotten weird, he reflected. I’m relieved to see a courser.

“X,” X6 repeated, and frowned. “You know my designation, MacCready.”

“Yeah, but it’s a nickname,” MacCready replied, grinning. “It suits you.” X6’s tiny frown became more apparent. Probably no one had ever given him a nickname before.

“I do not require additional names,” X6 said at last.

“It’s a gift,” MacCready said, waving one hand.

“How generous of you,” X6 said, dry again.

The elevator opened. The Institute had asked MacCready and X6 not to murder any scientists that they found, and the man in front of them certainly had the look of a scientific type. He was wearing a lab coat and nervously poking at some dials on a big machine.

“Edward?” he said uncertainly, and turned around. MacCready made an executive decision.

“Grab him,” he said. X6 moved. Within seconds he’d clamped one hand over the scientist's mouth and the other around his neck.

“You know, I have some handcuffs,” MacCready said thoughtfully. They secured the scientist, who was thankfully too sensible to try and fight X6, and peered into the next room. Through the door, MacCready could just see the outline of some kind of prison. He hummed and took his time going through the cabinets while the scientist watched. There was something in the drawer labeled ‘backup healing serum’; MacCready contemplated the label dubiously and then pocketed it.

“What's that?” X6 asked.

“Modified stimpack,” MacCready lied easily. There was something about deceiving X6 that amused him. The scientist made a muffled sound of outrage, and X6’s hand tightened on his neck. MacCready stashed the rest of the meds in his backpack and checked for caps twice before turning to the scientist. At a signal, X6 loosened his grip on the man's neck.

“Alright,” MacCready said easily, jabbing a thumb towards the prison behind them. “What’s in there?”

“Alien tech,” the scientist rasped out. “Very dangerous.”

“Hah! I always knew aliens were real. X, you think the Institute would be interested in that?” The scientist went pale, but he didn’t say anything. A grin spread across MacCready’s face.

“Let’s go take a look,” he said.  

There was a brief scuffle as the scientist tried to make a break for his console and was restrained by X6. There was panic in his face.

“What do you have in there?” MacCready asked lazily. The man’s arms were being held behind his back by X6. The courser could break this man like a twig if he wanted to.

“D-don’t!” The scientist said. “I’m begging you. He’s not what he looks like.”

“Do you have an alien trapped here?” MacCready said, torn between fear and excitement.

“N-no,” the scientist stuttered out. “It’s my father.”

“Are you an alien?” MacCready asked, dubious.

“No! We’re still human.”

“Still?” MacCready said. “You know what, never mind. Whatever’s going on in there, I’m going to go take a look.”

“I’ll wait here and get more information from him,” X6 said calmly. “Go on ahead.” MacCready nodded and advanced. The area behind the glass was filled with futuristic looking technology that crackled and spat electricity, ramshackle and wild, like a real mad scientist’s lair.

When MacCready emerged into the main chamber, there was a thing at the window, staring intently at him. He jerked back and reached for his pistol, then registered that it was only a man, or something shaped like a man. Its face was distorted, covered by some sort of mask.

MacCready’s heart was thudding, but the thing was trapped inside the cell. It couldn’t reach him. He hoped.

“Are you an alien?” he asked. A grimace crossed the things distorted features and MacCready had the creeping feeling that it was smiling.

“I have learned to be estranged from mankind,” it said. “The artefact has taught me so much over the last 400 years… free me, and I will show you what I know.” Well, that sounded exactly like what a comic book supervillain would say. MacCready advanced cautiously towards the glass.

“My son has trapped me here,” the thing said. “He has dreams of reverting me to the weak thing I once was, but I know better. Kill him.” The thing's voice changed, became oily, confidential. “You seem like a man who understands the value of power.” MacCready took another unwilling step closer to the glass. “You've had modifications done, haven't you? I promise, the power you have now will be nothing compared to what I can offer.”

MacCready considered it for a heartbeat, then crossed the final step to stand right next to the glass. He half expected the thing to lunge, to scare him, but it just stood there. Waiting. Watching. A shudder of unease went down MacCready’s spine. Every instinct he had was screaming that this was a bad idea. He backed away from the glass and returned to X6 and the struggling scientist.

“Don't do anything stupid,” he said to the scientist, and then, to X6: “Let go of him.” The scientist stood there, paralyzed with fear. He couldn't meet MacCready’s eyes.

“That thing isn't your father anymore,” MacCready said. “Kill it. Assholes like you always have a way to kill things they keep in cages.” X6 caught MacCready’s eye over his shoulder.

“He could be human again,” the scientist pleaded.

“No,” MacCready said. “It couldn't.” A shudder passed through the scientist.

“I suppose you would know,” he said. “The safeguard is already set. If the override code isn't entered, the cage will be flooded with radiation.” MacCready made eye contact with X6 over the scientist's shoulder. Do we believe this bullshit? He asked silently. X6 gave a little nod.

“Good enough for me,” MacCready said, and turned for the exit. “Let's go, X.”

 

Whatever was in that basement, it caused sufficient excitement that MacCready got a few days off work while all the scientists used the teleporter to take field trips. Apparently, everyone wanted to go see what was out there. Fine by MacCready. He spent his spare time napping and trying to figure out the best way to cook a brahmin steak, and even took a couple of trips to the courser obstacle course.

He ran into X6, who informed him that he'd won their little contest in the Insane Asylum 13 to 11, then chased MacCready halfway across the course just to prove he could. Modifications or no modifications, X6 was scary.

Sadly, the excitement wore off in a few days, and MacCready was once again summoned to go to the surface. They gave him a new series of shots and made him lie down in a weird chair to test his brain for- something. MacCready wasn't familiar with the terminology, but they told him he was doing fine.

X6, as usual, met him at the teleporter dressed in his habitual black.

“Morning, X,” MacCready said cheerfully, earning him a scandalized look from the scientists around them.

“There are multiple X models present in the Institute,” X6 said.

“Sure, but none of them are here,” MacCready pointed out. “Besides, you're my X-model.”

“I belong to the SRB,” X6 said.

“Yeah, but when we’re on assignment you have to listen to me,” MacCready pointed out.

X6’s response was an exasperated silence. One of the scientists gestured to MacCready and took him aside.

“You can't talk to the coursers like that,” he hissed. “It's inappropriate! You don't talk to your gun!”

“I do talk to my gun,” MacCready pointed out. “Mostly I say stuff like ‘Come on, baby’, but I don't think X6 would appreciate that.”

“I'll be talking to the director about this,” the scientist snarled.

“Jeez, alright. You don't need to go that far. I'll quit talking to him.”

“You'd better,” the scientist said. MacCready narrowly resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He nodded and made his way back to the teleporter, and they were off.

“Why are scientists so stiff about this shit anyway?” he complained, rubbing the light out of his eyes. “It's not like you're going to go crazy and murder everyone just because I said good morning to you once.”

“Some scientists outside the SRB are unfamiliar with our protocols, amd compensate for it with excessive adherence to protocol.” MacCready puzzled out this sentence for a bit.

“Some people don't know shit, and they compensate for it by being assholes,” he translated. X6 made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a muffled laugh, but when MacCready glanced at his face it was set in the usual blank expression.

“Gotcha,” he said grinning. His next sentence was interrupted by a low moan. “Oh for fuck’s sake- not ghouls!” He ducked backwards, putting X6 between him and the approaching masses of irradiated flesh, and unholstered his rifle.

His rifle dropped the first two with explosive headshots, and X6 sidestepped the third one's wild charge, sending it sprawling on the floor. His foot went up, then down, and the thing's head shattered with an explosive crunch.

“Gross,” MacCready said. “I hate these damn things. Wish they'd just lay down and die already.”

“Agreed,” X6 said.

They advanced through the building, X6 in the lead. There was something about the faded walls that made MacCready uneasy, something above and beyond his usual distaste for ghouls, but he couldn't pinpoint what it was.

He realized he was getting distracted when one of his shots skimmed X6’s shoulder, drawing an angry grunt from the courser, and forced himself to focus. His head was buzzing.

“What's wrong with you?” X6 demanded, and MacCready couldn't form a coherent defense.

“Mild headache,” he lied, and reached into his jacket for a stimpack. “Must be from the test this morning. Let me get that for you. Something about this place gives me the jitters.”

The stimpack was one of the ones from the lab, and it stung more than usual. MacCready used half on X6 and the other half on himself, hoping to get rid of his growing sense of unease.

“What is this?” X6 asked suddenly, and took the drug from MacCready’s hand. The other side was labeled “immortality serum.”

“Uh, that can't be real, right?” MacCready said. X6 scowled, then snapped the stimpack in half and tossed it in a pile of trash.

“Watch what you use on us,” he snapped, and stalked away. One more floor.

Because MacCready's luck was universally shit, the bottom floor was populated by a mass of screaming, gyrating ghouls that overwhelmed X6 in the first wave. MacCready dropped a few with his rifle, but more and more poured out through the broken window, screaming and thrashing. Worst of all: one of them waa glowing, surrounded by an unearthly aura that drove the others forward in mindless frenzy.

In a panic, MacCready went straight up the wall and onto the roof of the small structure in the middle of the room.

“X!” he yelled. “X, up here!” No response from the screaming mass down below. MacCready peered over the edge nervously and considered throwing down a grenade. The ghouls were clustered close together, but X6… MacCready steeled himself, switched his rifle for a shotgun, and jumped down. One, two, three broadsides fired into the writhing mass, and some of them turned to chase after MacCready. But it wasn't enough. X6 wasn't moving. MacCready fired again, taking the head off a ghoul that had ventured too close, and barely stepped clear of the mass of grasping hands. The glowing one turned to look at him, and he fired again, clicked on empty, and ran.

The mass chased after him, and he was just able to swing clear and scramble sideways, back onto the roof of the little building. The ghouls screamed their frustration, but MacCready was out of range.

“X!” he called. “X6! Up here!” there was a heartstopping silence, and then X6 swung himself upwards, breathing heavily, murder in his eyes. MacCready handed him a grenade. The ghouls were beginning to clamber onto the roof, using each other as footstools in their mindless drive to reach the intruders. X6 wound up and threw, and there was an explosion, loud in the enclosed space. Limbs went flying

“Right,” MacCready said, and handed the rest of the grenade belt to X6. “Told you energy weapons don't work well on ghouls. Let's go.”

They finished the crowd and then the glowing one, which sent up a nasty cloud of radiation when it died. MacCready’s skin prickled.

“Gross. I want rad-away,” he said. X6’s response was a grunt. He seemed mostly recovered, but MacCready made him take a stimpack anyway, just in case.

They stood on the roof a long moment, recovering from the aftereffects of battle. MacCready’s jittery feeling was back, and worse than ever.

“Guess we should check the last room, huh,” he said without enthusiasm. X6 nodded.

The lab that had caused them all this trouble was a little thing, not much bigger than MacCready’s apartment. X6 took the left side, MacCready the right. MacCready scavenged some ammo and meds before stumbling on the thing they'd been looking for. It was a little vial, barely bigger than MacCready’s hand.

“Medicine, huh,” MacCready said disinterestedly. “Glad I'm not sick.” He put it back down on the table. There was a knot in his stomach. The back of his neck ached faintly where they'd stuck a needle in him that morning.

He picked up the medicine again, and tossed it overhand to X6, who filed it away for safekeeping. There was a magazine on one of the tables; MacCready picked it up and rifled absentmindedly through the pages.

“Hey, X. Do you ever get the sense that you're forgetting something? Like you left the stove on or didn't buy a thing you needed at the store, but you don't know what.”

A deep sense of unease poked at him. There was something - something in this room that had been important, and he couldn't remember what it was. He scanned the room, trying to remember, but nothing stuck out. He felt abruptly ridiculous.

“I don't forget things,” X6 said, drawing MacCready's attention away. He closed the lid of the footlocker he'd been examining, and crossed the room to MacCready. “Everything I need to know, I know.” Their eyes met. X6 took MacCready's face in his hand and tilted his chin upwards, forcing him to look into X6’s eyes.

“I thought you'd be different, somehow,” X6 said. His eyes were very blue over the edge of his sunglasses.

“No,” MacCready said, startled. “I'm still me.”

“Yes and no,” X6 said. He was close enough that MacCready could feel the faint exhale of his breath against his skin, his body held just clear of MacCready like a promise of violence. He sounded surprised, maybe pleased. It was hard to tell. “You're better this way. I like it.”

“Oh?” MacCready said, laughing a little, but X6 was serious.

“I'm glad to have you with us at last,” X6 said.

“It's not like I have anywhere else to go,” MacCready said. “What's this about?”

X6 smiled then, and it made him startlingly, terribly handsome. For a single trembling moment, MacCready thought they might kiss, and then X6 stepped back, the cool edge of his gloved finger brushing MacCready's lower lip as he went.

“Let's move out,” he said.

“Right,” MacCready said, and tried to tell himself the feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn't disappointment. “Bet I can beat you there.”

“Do you even know where we're going?” X6 asked.

“The old fort,” MacCready retorted. He'd looked at the mission briefing that morning. “We gotta make contact with some dude from the past, or something.”

“The director's father,” X6 corrected without malice, already moving towards the exit. MacCready jogged up alongside him.

“Jin Li,” he said, and smiled at X6’s surprise. “I'm a professional, you know.”

“Congratulations on fulfilling minimal expectations,” X6 said dryly. He pressed the button to call the elevator, and there was the screech of ancient gears slowly moving.

“ _You_ said you like me,” MacCready pointed out.

“Did I?” X6 replied. “I don't remember.” MacCready scowled at him. The elevator doors slid open, and the two of them clambered in. In such a small space, X6's body dominated MacCready's peripheral vision. The other courser was so tall, so broad, a terrifying comfort to have near. He caught MacCready staring and smiled faintly, his eyes blue over the rim of his sunglasses. 

“You think you're real funny,” MacCready muttered as the elevator came to a halt. “Come on, wise guy. I've got some books at home I want to read.”

The elevator opened, and MacCready stepped out, already planning the route he would take to reach the old fort. Without awareness or regret he stepped over the threshold and away from the last remnants of his old life, and X6 followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience, everyone.


End file.
